Law360, New York ( May 13, 2015, 10:27 AM EDT) -- Outside of the bankruptcy context, there is little practical need to focus on the distinctions between corporate veil-piercing and alter-ego causes of action because the practical implications of each ruling are the same: The plaintiff is able to reach the assets of another entity in addition to those of the defendant when seeking to satisfy its judgment. The litigants, and by extension their lawyers, often pay little attention to whether the basis for the judgment was the vicarious liability of the third party (as in the case of a veil-piercing determination) or a finding that the third party and the defendant were in reality the same entity (as in the case of an alter-ego determination). New York bankruptcy cases have consistently shown, however, that these two separate theories of liability have significantly different implications for an individual debtor who has been the target of a veil-piercing or an alter-ego claim....