Also, one can argue that if they had truly taken every precaution then either intruders would not be able to break in or they are prepared for such a scenario. Evidently, neither was the case.
In other industries standards and "recommendations" exist to state a set of measures companies have to set up in order to be "secure"
Are there such things? In practice, are they a significant portion of the banking market?
Also, even if you take every reasonable precaution, there's still a possibility that your systems can be broken into.
Corporate formalities alone don't prevent piercing the corporate veil.
Sure, but undercapitalization alone can with certain types of creditors, and gross undercapitalization can be a significant factor in favor of piercing the veil in other cases.
And actively concealing a known "leak" of funds held in trust for customers arguably goes far beyond mere negligence.
Not alone, it doesn't routinely.
> It's a tort.
Anything that produces civil liability is a tort. It wouldn't be much of a veil if anything that was a tort routinely pierced it.
Also, it's not really true that anything that produces civil liability is a tort, is it? Civil liability also arises from contract law.
That's not about piercing the veil (which protects shareholders from liabilities incurred by the company), that's just individual liability independent of the corporate existence of corporate liability. And your right, but negligence liability requires that the individual agent owes you a duty of care and failed it; even in the case where corporate negligence toward a harmed party is easy to establish, individual negligence of a particular corporate agent toward the same party may be much harder to establish. And, again, such liability is a completely different issue then the corporate veil.
> Also, it's not really true that anything that produces civil liability is a tort, is it? Civil liability also arises from contract law.
True, but I think the general point still stands that the corporate veil would be pretty flimsy to start with if it didn't generally include protection from liability arising through tort.