How do you file a lawsuit against a company and the corporate office executives of same company?

Full question:

How do you file a lawsuit against a company and the corporate office executives of same company? The company violated several Washington State procedures regarding a lien sale. No notice was sent to the lessee. A certified letter alleged to have been sent was not in sent by the U.S. Postal Service. Records were falsified to make it appear that they were. The corporate manager sent me a fax six months after the corporation sold my unit and in that fax I have proof of all the above and more. I want to file a suit against him for going along with another corporate employee's attempts to cover the illegal activities. I brought everything and more to his attention by phone, e-mail, and fax. The corporate manager is aware of everything the employee had done and two of the corporate officers both have refused to talk to me by phone, e-mail, and fax.

• Category: Corporations
• Date: 04/07/2025
• State: Washington

Answer:

A corporation is an artificial person that is created by governmental action. The corporation exists in the eyes of the law as a person, separate and distinct from the persons who own the corporation (stockholders). This means that the property of the corporation is not owned by the stockholders, but by the corporation. Debts of the corporation are debts of this artificial person, and not of the persons running the corporation or owning shares of stock in it. The corporation can sue and be sued in it's own name. The shareholders cannot normally be sued as to corporate liabilities. A corporate officer or employee can be sued if such officer or employee committed a tort like wrongful or tortuous interference with a contract or fraud. In order to recover under a tortuous interference claim, the interference must generally be intentional and without legal justification.

Fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also by made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading. Mail fraud refers to any scheme which attempts to unlawfully obtain money or valuables in which the postal system is used at any point in the commission of a criminal offence. This scheme exists in various forms; order an item, make payment, receive nothing is the simplest form of mail fraud. Other variants include misleading descriptions (advertisement says an expensive camera is available by mail-order, when the item arrives it turns out to be a toy camera), deliberate sale of defective merchandise or even stolen merchandise.