Law Commons^™

The Revival Of Respondeat Superior And Evolution Of Gatekeeper Liability, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

In an era of servants and masters, respondeat superior emerged to hold the powerful accountable for the acts of those they control. That doctrine’s significance has only grown in an economy driven by large corporations that rely heavily on legions of subsidiaries and independent contractors, such as banks deploying independent call centers, oil companies using drilling contractors, and tech platforms connecting consumers to app developers. It is widely believed that firms can avoid third- party liability for many laws by outsourcing or creating subsidiaries.

This Article shows that common narratives of the demise of third-party liability are incomplete. Respondeat superior …

Law School News: Logan To Serve As Adviser On Restatement Third Of Torts 11-07-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Re-Examining The Law And Economics Of The Business Judgment Rule: Notes For Its Implementation In Non-Us Jurisdictions, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The business judgment rule, as it has been traditionally understood, seems to be based on three underlying assumptions that make this rule economically desirable. First, directors are subject to a credible threat of being sued for a breach of the duty of care. Second, the primary role of the corporation is to maximise shareholder value. Third, shareholders want the directors to pursue those investment projects with the highest net present value regardless of their volatility. This article challenges these assumptions and argues that the business judgment rule might not be desirable in some jurisdictions outside the United States and even …

The 5th Annual Professor Anthony J. Santoro Business Law Lecture: Enforcing Insider Trading Laws: The Changing Landscape, Stephen L. Cohen, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Overlitigating Corporate Fraud: An Empirical Examination, Jessica M. Erickson

Law Faculty Publications

Corporate law leaves no stone unturned when it comes to litigating corporate fraud. The legal system has developed a remarkable array of litigation options shareholder derivative suits, securities class actions, SEC enforcement actions, even criminal prosecutions all aimed at preventing the next corporate scandal. Scholars have long assumed that these different lawsuits offer different avenues for deterring the masterminds of corporate fraud yet this assumption has gone untested in the legal literature. This Article aims to fill that gap through the first empirical examination of the broader world of corporate fraud litigation. Analyzing over 700 lawsuits, the study reveals that …

The State Of Judiciary: A Corporate Perspective, Larry D. Thompson

Scholarly Works

The rule of law depends on highly talented, independent judges who conscientiously strive to ensure that the law is consistently applied in a principled and predictable manner This Essay addresses two potential threats to judicial independence and the rule of law that we believe warrant special attention at this time. First, inadequate judicial salaries pose a threat to the quality and independence of the judiciary. Judges' real pay has declined substantially over the past generation, even as the compensation of other callings within the legal profession has risen dramatically. This growing disparity in pay has prompted an increasing number of …

On Leaving Corporate Executives "Naked, Homeless And Without Wheels": Corporate Fraud, Equitable Remedies, And The Debate Over Entity Versus Individual Liability, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a lively debate about the relative merits of entity versus individual liability in cases involving securities fraud. After reviewing this debate in the context of both private securities litigation and SEC enforcement, this paper considers whether the legal tools available against individual executives are adequate, and if not, what changes might be made. The main focus is on equitable remedies, especially rescission and restitution, under both state and federal law. As to the former, Vice Chancellor Strine’s opinion in In re Healthsouth offers an interesting template, although there are limits on the usefulness of derivative suits to police …

What Default Rules Teach Us About Corporations; What Understanding Corporations Teaches Us About Default Rules, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses corporate law's default rules, which allow corporations to waive their directors' liability for damages based on a breach of their fiduciary duty of care. Most large publicly held corporations have adopted such a waiver in their articles of association. This Article suggests that courts should limit the range of the waivers to the circumstances that existed when the voters voted and to the information they received before they voted. This Article distinguishes between public contracts (legislation) and private contracts (commercial transactions) and the default rules that apply to each. The Article shows that courts view corporations and …

The Irrational Auditor And Irrational Liability, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

This Article argues that less liability for auditors in certain areas might encourage more accurate and useful financial statements, or at least equally accurate statements at a lower cost. Audit quality is promoted by three incentives: reputation, regulation, and litigation. When we take reputation and regulation into account, exposing auditors to potentially massive liability may undermine the effectiveness of reputation and regulation, thereby diminishing integrity of audited financial statements. The relation of litigation to the other incentives that promote audit quality has become more important in light of the sea change that occurred in the regulation of the auditing profession …

Spare The Rod, Spoil The Director? Revitalizing Directors' Fiduciary Duty Through Legal Liability, Lisa M. Fairfax

Faculty Scholarship

It appears that our society has tacitly agreed to spare corporate directors any significant legal liability—which includes both financial and incarceration—for failing to perform their duties as board members. Thus, over the last twenty years, there has been a virtual elimination of legal liability—particularly in the form of financial penalties—for directors who breach their fiduciary duty of care. This is true despite the fact that we entrust directors with the awesome responsibility of monitoring all of America's corporations as well as the officers and agents within those corporations. More surprisingly, this tacit agreement against legal liability for directors has persisted …

Unleashing A Gatekeeper: Why The Sec Should Mandate Disclosure Of Details Concerning Directors' And Officers' Liability Insurance Policies, Sean J. Griffith

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the connection between corporate governance and D&O insurance. It argues that D&O insurers act as gatekeepers and guarantors of corporate governance, screening and pricing corporate governance risks to maintain the profitability of their risk pools. As a result, D&O insurance premiums provide the insurer’s assessment of a firm’s governance quality. Most basically, firms with relatively worse corporate governance pay higher D&O premiums. This simple relationship could signal important information to investors and other capital market participants. Unfortunately, the signal is not being sent. Corporations lack the incentive to produce this disclosure themselves, and U.S. securities regulators do …

Changing Paradigms: The Liability Of Corporate Groups In Germany, René Reich-Graefe

Faculty Scholarship

The German law on affiliated companies and groups of companies ("Konzernrecht"), as embodied in the German Stock Corporation Act of 1965, as amended ("Aktiengesetz"), has often been credited for its innovative approach to the dichotomy of liability strategies relevant to corporate groups-viz., the traditional concept of entity liability based on the fundamental doctrine of the legal separateness of the corporate entity and, accordingly, resulting in a limitation of investor liability as the rule, and discrete and rare occurrences of what is almost poetically designated the "piercing of the corporate veil" ("DurchgriffshaJtung") as narrow and reluctantly crafted exceptions, and the more …

Uncovering A Gatekeeper: Why The Sec Should Mandate Disclosure Of Details Concerning Directors' And Officers' Liability Insurance Policies, Sean J. Griffith

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the connection between corporate governance and directors’ and officers’ (D&O) insurance. It argues that D&O insurers act as gatekeepers and guarantors of corporate governance, screening and pricing corporate governance risks to maintain the profitability of their risk pools. As a result, in a well-working insurance market, D&O insurance premiums would convey the insurer's assessment of a firm's governance quality. Simply stated, firms with better corporate governance would pay relatively low D&O premiums, while firms with worse corporate governance would pay more. This simple relationship could signal important information to investors and other capital market participants. Unfortunately, the …

Litigator's Thumbnail Guide To The Warn Act, David A. Santacroce

Articles

When large companies choose to lay off workers or close down plants without prior notice, they can be subject to extensive liability under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), including 60 days backpay to all affected workers, daily fines to local government, and attorney fees generated during the suit. In the following article, the author presents the bare bones basics of WARN in order for employees and their advocates to understand how and when WARN applies.

A Jurisdictional Approach To Collapsing Corporate Distinctions, Peter B. Oh

Articles

This article challenges our persistent path dependence on defunct distinctions between corporations and certain limited unincorporated associations. Recent federal tax regulations have inspired proposals for consolidated treatment of all limited business organizations through uniformly based or universally applicable statutes. I contend these proposals are preoccupied with how hybrid organizations such as the limited liability company and the limited liability partnership amalgamate, and thus implicitly preserve, traditional dichotomies between corporations and partnership categorizations as well as entities and aggregate theories. The continued use of these schemes compromises the legal basis for such proposals.

By critically examining certain jurisdictional principles, this article …

A Control-Based Approach To Shareholder Liability For Corporate Torts, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

Some commentators defend limited shareholder liability for torts and statutory violations as efficient, even though it encourages corporations to overinvest in and to externalize the costs of risky activity. Others propose pro rata unlimited shareholder liability for corporate torts. Both approaches, however, fail to account fully for qualitative differences among shareholders. Controlling shareholders, in particular, may have lower information costs, greater influence over managerial decisionmaking, and greater ability to benefit from corporate activity. This Article develops a control-based approach to shareholder liability. It first explores several differences among shareholders. For example, a controlling shareholder can more easily curb managerial risk …

To Know A Veil, Douglas C. Michael

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Lawyers, judges, law students, and law professors have a love-hate relationship with the doctrine of “piercing the corporate veil”—the idea that shareholders might sometimes be personally liable for the debts of the corporation. It is the subject covered more than all others in courses on corporation law. It is widely litigated, being the subject of thousands of opinions. Yet, for all this attention, it is routinely vilified by the experts. Most commentators recognize that it is jurisprudence without substance.

This Article is an attempt to form a basis for rigorous analysis of virtually every veil-piercing case and to rid the …

Corporate Judgement Proofing: A Response To Lynn Lopucki's 'The Death Of Liability', James J. White

Articles

In "The Death of Liability" Professor Lynn M. LoPucki argues that American businesses are rendering themselves judgment proof.- Using the metaphor of a poker game, Professor LoPucki claims American businesses are increasingly able to participate in the poker game without putting "chips in the pot." He argues that it has become easier for American companies to play the game without having chips in the pot because of the ease with which a modern debtor can grant secured credit, because of the growth of the peculiar form of sale known as asset securitization, because foreign havens for secreting assets are now …

How To Negotiate A Sales Contract, James J. White

Articles

A. Introduction 1. In my experience, lawyers begin negotiating only after the business people have decided upon the description and quality of the product, the time of delivery, and the mode and amount of payment. The lawyers are left with the pathological problems - who gets what in case of trouble. 2. Most of those pathological problems relate to the seller's responsibility if the product does not conform to the contract or otherwise fails to please the buyer. These failures can cause economic loss to the buyer, economic loss to a remote purchaser, or personal injury or property damage to …

Reinsurance: Bad Faith Considerations And Insolvency Dilemma, Hui-Ju Hsieh

LLM Theses and Essays

Reinsurance is insurance that an insurance company purchases from another insurance company. The original insurance company is called the reinsured, and the insurance company that is contracted is called the reinsurer. The main purpose of reinsurance is to disperse or spread the risk of loss. The reinsurance relationship is frequently characterized as an exercise of fiduciary responsibility based upon an undertaking of utmost good faith between contracting parties. However, disputes arise; most litigation involving reinsurance has been between reinsurers and persons not party to the reinsurance agreement. This paper’s first major area of discussion is the relationship between the reinsurer …

Responsibility Of Investment Bankers To Shareholders, Ted J. Fiflis

Publications

No abstract provided.

Successor Liability In Bankruptcy: Some Unifying Themes Of Intertemporal Creditor Priorities Created By Running Covenants, Products Liability, And Toxic-Waste Cleanup, David G. Carlson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Limited Liability For Corporate Shareholders: Myth Or Matter-Of-Fact, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

One of the most important and firmly entrenched concepts of modern corporate law is the concept of limited liability. The digests abound with ringing phrases granting the owners of corporations immunity from liability beyond their initial investment. There are, however, numerous cases in which the courts have denied the owners of corporations the protection of limited liability and have held the owners liable for an obligation incurred by the corporation. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the theories under which the owners of corporations have been held liable for the contractual obligation of corporations.

Comparison Of Major Tax And Legal Advantages Of Operating In An Unincorporated Form, Douglas A. Kahn

Book Chapters

As an introduction to the subject of this conference, several topics will be discussed. First, the tax and non-tax consequences of conducting business in a partnership form will be examined and compared with the consequences of doing business in a corporate form. The principle concern of this paper, however, is to examine the tax consequences of transferring property to a corporation, whether such transfer is made at the time the corporation is organized or at some subsequent date.

Technology Assessment And Social Control, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

The emerging concepts of corporate responsibility and technology assessment are, to a considerable extent, responses to problems arising from technological developments and their applications by industry and government. These problems appear in the relatively discrete sectors of consumer protection and occupational safety and in the diffuse sectors of community quality of life and the national and international environments.

The Control Test For Limited Partnerships, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

Under the Uniform Limited Partnership Act, a limited partner may become generally liable if "in addition to the exercise of his rights and powers as a limited partner, he takes part in the control of the business." Although the Act is now over fifty years old, no satisfactory standard of "control" has been enunciated, and no definition of the "rights and powers" of a limited partner has been forthcoming. Mr. Feld examines the ambiguities in the statutory language and the dilemma in which they place counsel seeking to advise his clients, and concludes that the Act is due for an …

Liability Of Corporations For Slander, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

S. entrusted by the president and general manager of a corporation with the business of obtaining a settlement from plaintiff for a mistakenly supposed shortage in his accounts with the corporation, falsely orally charged him with embezzlement. This charge was made to R., president of another corporation for which the plaintiff was working at the time, and as a step toward getting a settlement by the plaintiff. On the request for a directed verdict, by the defendant, the legal question was presented whether a corporation is liable for slander spoken by the agent of the corporation in the course of …

Liability Of Water Companies For Losses By Fire In Actions Of Tort, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

In Fisher v. Greensboro Water Supply Company, 128 N. C. 375, it was held that the defendant water company was liable in damages in an action of tort for negligent failure to furnish sufficient water pressure in the mains of the city, by reason of which negligence the plaintiff's house was burned. The only duty on the part of the defendant to furnish water grew out of a contract made by the company with the city and the fact that the defendant had entered upon the business of supplying water pursuant to such contract.

Liability Of Water Companies For Fire Losses, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

In two recent articles published'in this Review, the question of the liability of water companies for fire losses was somewhat exhaustively discussed. The majority of the actions wherein it has been sought to hold water companies liable for fire losses suffered by private property owners, have been brought for breach of contract. In a few cases the theory adopted was that the water company owed a duty to all property owners, by reason of the public character of its service; and the fact that it was under contract with the city to furnish an adequate water supply and pressure for …