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Corporate Governance And Minority Rights, A. J. Maclntosh

Dalhousie Law Journal

Anglo-American corporate law has developed on the premise that ordinarily the majority is entitled to rule. Nevertheless, the courts have recognized the dangers in permitting tyranny by the majority and have given relief in cases where they believed the majority was clearly abusing its powers. Courts have had little difficulty in doing this where it was clear that the majority was practising fraud in the sense that it was appropriating to itself property or benefits which, in the view of the courts, belonged to the corporation or, as it was sometimes put, to the body of shareholders as a whole. …