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Litigating Challenges To Executive Pay: An Exercise In Futility?, Randall Thomas, Kenneth J. Martin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This paper is an empirical analysis of plaintiffs' success rates in executive compensation litigation. Using data from publicly available files, this study examines a sample of 124 cases where shareholders have challenged executive compensation levels and practices at public and closely held corporations. This data set shows that shareholders are successful in at least some stage of this litigation in a significant percentage of these cases. Our most robust result is that plaintiffs win a greater percentage of the time in compensation cases against closely held companies than against publicly held companies. This result is consistent for every stage of …