Trial Court Confirms That a Corporation Cannot Assert the Fifth Amendment, But a Corporate Representative Can

In the case of L.V. v. Water Gap Capital Partners, LLC, No. 1189-CV-2025 (C.P. Monroe. Co. June 3, 2025 Zulick, P.J.), the court denied a Defendant’s Motion to Stay a civil litigation matter in order to protect the Fifth Amendment rights of their employees and corporate representatives.

The court reviewed the law regarding the assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The court noted that it is well-settled that a corporate Defendant may not assert the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. 

However, a corporate representative is permitted to assert the privilege if answers in litigation may tend to incriminate the representative personally. However, if the representative whom the corporate appoints to act on its behalf asserts the Fifth Amendment privilege, the corporation must appoint someone else to respond on its behalf unless the corporation can show that there is no corporate representative who could furnish the discovery without the possibility of self-incrimination.

Here, the court noted that certain Defendants were corporate Defendants. Those corporate Defendants did not have the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination available to them.

The court did otherwise note that, as noted above, the corporate Defendants did have a right to appoint a representative to speak on their behalf under the parameters of the law.

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Source: “The Legal Intelligencer Common Pleas Case Alert,” www.Law.com (July 10, 2025).