It is perfectly legal for an owner of a shaky business to pay himself an enormous salary and then leave his employees and creditors high and dry when the business tanks.

No wonder the wealth gap between the very rich and everyone else continues to grow.

Last month, Wisconsin’s Fourth District Court of Appeals threw out a $6.5 million jury verdict against two business owners accused of looting their company. Daniel Virnich and Jack Moores extracted more than $10 million from their company over a 14-year period through salaries, fees and other transactions. Their firm, Communications Products Inc. of Lancaster, defaulted on a bank loan in 2003 and went into receivership, but that didn’t prevent Virnich from buying a mansion in Colorado. The mansion is part of his $2 million in estimated assets. Creditors and workers didn’t fare as well. A local bank will eat a $750,000 loan, and employees won’t get bonuses required by their union contracts.

This may not represent an appealing model of free enterprise, but it warms the heart of the state’s business lobby. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce sided with Virnich and Moores and filed a brief which reads: “This case is about a good corporate citizen acting pursuant to sound business judgment and long-standing principles of corporate governance to maximize the benefits of the legal processes.”

That’s WMC’s definition of a good corporate citizen? The brief exposes WMC not as a defender of free enterprise and open markets, but as a lobby for the well-to-do.

This isn’t an isolated case. Wall Street executives can rack up fees and commissions from selling worthless insurance on bundled mortgages but still insist they’re entitled to bonuses -- and actually get them. Pardon the American people if that leaves them outraged.

The impact on income disparity can’t be overlooked. Daniel Virnich has his Colorado mansion. His employees and reditors have broken promises. It gives free enterprise a bad name.