United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers v. 163 Pleasant Street Corp.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

These appeals call upon us to ascertain the extent of a federal court’s power, in an ERISA case, to assert personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation. To complete our task, we must also consider when, and on what terms, separate corporate identities can be disregarded, to the end that a parent corporation may be sued and held responsible for a subsidiary’s employee benefit obligations. At the conclusion of our odyssey, we find that the court below lacked personal jurisdiction over the primary defendant in this case. Hence, we vacate the orders which lie at the heart…