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Full-Text Articles in Law
What Default Rules Teach Us About Corporations; What Understanding Corporations Teaches Us About Default Rules, Tamar Frankel
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 …
Galactic Stupidity And The Business Judgment Rule, David Rosenberg
Galactic Stupidity And The Business Judgment Rule, David Rosenberg
ExpressO
The article examines whether the business judgment rule allows courts to review the substantive wisdom of decisions made by corporate directors. Although the conventional view among legal scholars is that the business judgment rule precludes such review, the article concludes that Delaware courts must sometimes examine the substance of directors’ decisions in order to determine whether those directors acted in good faith. Where the evidence shows that a director acted in a rational way (and therefore in good faith) in arriving at a decision, courts will not review the substance of that decision. However, where a director made a decision …
Good Faith, State Of Mind, And The Outer Boundaries Of Director Liability In Corporate Law, Christopher M. Bruner
Good Faith, State Of Mind, And The Outer Boundaries Of Director Liability In Corporate Law, Christopher M. Bruner
ExpressO
The Delaware General Corporation Law was amended in 1986 to permit shareholder-approved exculpatory charter provisions shielding directors from monetary liability for certain types of fiduciary duty breaches, explicitly excepting breaches of the duty of loyalty and conduct not in "good faith" – evidently distinct concepts in the Delaware legislature’s view. This paper examines the development of corporate fiduciary duty doctrine in Delaware leading up to and following this statutory amendment, focusing particularly on the Delaware courts' evolving conception of the meaning and doctrinal status of good faith. Specifically, the paper argues that Delaware's statutory exculpation regime and good faith case …
Restoring Trust In Corporate Directors: The Disney Standard And The New Good Faith, Sarah Helene Duggin, Robert M. Goldman
Restoring Trust In Corporate Directors: The Disney Standard And The New Good Faith, Sarah Helene Duggin, Robert M. Goldman
American University Law Review
The purpose of this Article is to explore the parameters and potential impact of the good faith standard articulated in Disney V and clarified in Stone. Part I begins with a brief review of the historical impact of the tension between entrepreneurial freedom and managerial accountability, and Part II explains why the Disney standard differs significantly from the traditional understanding of good faith as the absence of subjective bad faith. Part III points out that the court’s use of the language of bad faith to articulate the new good faith may undercut the effectiveness of the standard. It urges further …