Law Commons^™

The Life (And Death?) Of Corporate Waste, Harwell Wells

Washington and Lee Law Review

At first glance, corporate waste makes no sense. The very definition of waste—a transaction so one-sided that no reasonable business person would enter into it, an act equivalent to gift or “spoliation”—suggests that it would never occur, for what corporation would ever enter into a transaction so absurd? Yet waste claims are regularly made against corporate managers. Respected judges have downplayed waste as a “vestige” and described it as “possibly non-existent,” the Loch Ness monster of corporate law; but waste survives. It is a remnant of ultra vires, a doctrine proclaimed largely dead for the last hundred years—but waste is …