• Several limited liability laws must be followed.corporative business image by breezeart.us from Fotolia.com
  
  Large and diversified companies often involve several hundred (or thousand) employees. Many of these employees are capable of putting the company at legal risk through action or negligence. Because of this, many states allow companies to form with a “limited liability” status. This protects the company, in many instances, from the actions or inaction of individuals working within the company. Different states have different laws concerning limited liability companies and their culpability for offenses.
  
  

Company Name Requirements

• Many limited liability corporations have a public name that would not suggest limited liability. Still, at least during the incorporation of these companies, the name must include certain items. The Arizona state legislature, for example, has made it mandatory that companies applying for limited liability status have company names which “contain the words 'limited liability company' or 'limited company' or the abbreviations 'L.L.C.', 'L.C.', 'LLC' or 'LC', in uppercase or lowercase letters.”
  
  Additionally, the company names must not include the words "association", "corporation", "incorporated", "bank", "credit union", "trust" or "deposit". Also, the name must be one that is not identical to a company already doing business within the state (e.g., if a foreign company like Ferrari wanted to open a local subsidiary limited liability company, it could not also be named Ferrari LLC).
  
  

The Power of an Individual

• Like corporations, states such as Florida grant limited liability companies the same rights as individuals: the right to sue and be sued; the right to purchase, receive, own, use or improve goods or stock; the right to hold a mortgage; the right to borrow money; and other rights that would otherwise only be granted to an individual person.
  
  This status helps to protect the individuals running and profiting from the LLC, since the company is now capable of being responsible for actions committed by its members. For example, if a trash disposal LLC made up of five people is found guilty of dumping garbage in a local water source, the company is guilty of the illegal dump, but the five members are not so long as they can claim ignorance to the crime.
  
  

Liability

• There are crimes for which even an LLC must answer. Even LLC members must answer for crimes committed during the performance of their job if the crime was committed as a result of wanton destruction or recklessness. The LLC is also responsible for acts of intentional fraud or theft.