Law Commons^™

(Not) Advising Corporate Officers About Fiduciary Duties, Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Robert V. Ricca

Scholarly Articles

This Article explores the intersection of an important, unresolved corporate law issue and an overlooked professional responsibility issue persistently arising in the corporate milieu. The corporate law question currently unaddressed in Delaware law is whether the fiduciary duties of corporate officers, as agents, are the same as, or different from, the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. A related question is whether, in reviewing officer conduct, courts will apply the business judgment rule in the same broad (and protective) manner in which it is applied to assessing director behavior.

The professional responsibility issue concerns whether, and how well, lawyers are advising …

Having The Fiduciary Duty Talk: Model Advice For Corporate Officers (And Other Senior Agents), Lyman P.Q. Johnson

Scholarly Articles

Countless legal materials address the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. These include extensive decisional law, numerous institutes and continuing legal education seminars, several treatises and casebooks, and the well-known Corporate Director's Guidebook, recently released in its fifth edition. By contrast, legal materials on the fiduciary duties of corporate officers - key actors and agents in any company - are quite sparse. Case law is meager and undeveloped, with even such a baseline issue as the applicability of the business judgment rule lacking resolution. Treatises, institutes, and other legal materials frequently lump officer fiduciary duties with those of directors or treat …

Piercing The Corporate Veil, Financial Responsibility, And The Limits Of Limited Liability, David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

Veil-piercing is the most heavily litigated issue in corporate law, yet legal doctrine in this area is notoriously incoherent. In this article, I argue that the only way to make sense of veil-piercing is through an accurate understanding of the policy underlying limited liability. Once that is appreciated it then becomes possible to make sense of the appropriate limits on limited liability. Piercing the corporate veil can then serve the useful function of distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate reliance on statutory limited liability.

After surveying efficiency rationales for limited liability and finding them unpersuasive, I propose that the best way to …

Criminalization Of Corporate Law: The Impact On Shareholders And Other Constituents, David K. Millon

Scholarly Articles

None available.