Law Commons^™

Unauthorised Fiduciary Gains And The Constructive Trust, Alvin W. L. See

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article challenges the traditional assumption that all cases of unauthorised fiduciary gain warrant the same legal treatment, in particular the imposition of a constructive trust as a disgorgement remedy. It proposes a method of categorising the cases and ranking them based on the strength of the principal’s interest. It is suggested that in cases where the principal’s interest is not particularly strong, there is room for taking into account the interests of innocent third parties and affording them the necessary protection. For this purpose, the remedial constructive trust supplies the needed flexibility.

Wills, Trusts, And Estates, J. William Gray Jr., Katherine E. Ramsey

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

By Any Other Name: Rational Basis Inquiry And The Federal Government's Fiduciary Duty Of Care, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Under modern law, federal legislation is subject to “rational basis review” under the doctrinal rubric of “substantive due process.” That construction of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is notoriously difficult to justify as a matter of original constitutional meaning. Something very similar to substantive due process, however, is easily justifiable as a matter of original constitutional meaning once one understands that the Constitution, for interpretative purposes, is best seen as a kind of fiduciary instrument. Fiduciary instruments operate against a background of legal norms that notably include a duty of care on the part of agents. All federal actors …

Shareholder Wealth Maximization As Means To An End, Robert P. Bartlett, Iii

Robert Bartlett

In several recent cases, the Delaware Chancery Court has emphasized that where a conflict of interest exists between holders of a company’s common stock and holders of its preferred stock, the standard of conduct for directors requires that they strive to maximize the value of the corporation for the benefit of its common stockholders rather than for its preferred stockholders. This article interrogates this view of directors’ fiduciary duties from the perspective of incomplete contracting theory. Building on the seminal work of Sanford Grossman and Oliver Hart, incomplete contracting theory examines the critical role of corporate control rights for addressing …

The Lawyer As Lover: Are Courts Romanticizing The Lawyer-Client Relationship?, Bruce A. Green

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Limiting The Legal Liability Of Religious Institutions For Their Clergy: Cavanaugh V Grenville Christian College, M H. Ogilvie

Dalhousie Law Journal

The purpose of this article is to explore the case law relating to the potential legal liability of ecclesiastical institutions for the conduct of their clergy and lay employees in the tort of negligence, vicarious liability and breach of fiduciary duty While a number of cases have resulted in findings of liability especially in those relating to the Indian residential schools, a recent decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal, Cavanaugh v. Grenville Christian College, suggests ways of thinking about the limits and scope of liability for institutions whose charitable purposes are occasionally betrayed by rogue persons over whom theymay …

The Challenge Of Fiduciary Regulation: The Investment Advisors Act After Seventy-Five Years, Roberta S. Karmel

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Seventy-five years after its enactment the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 has advanced from a relatively weak statute merely registering advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to a more robust law imposing fiduciary responsibilities on advisers. Over the years, the number of investment advisers and the number of their clients have increased greatly. The SEC therefore has been pressured by Congress to develop a harmonized fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and advisers and also to develop and enforce a greater degree of oversight over the advisory industry. These developments have raised the questions of how to fund such efforts …

The “Prudent Person” Standard In Esop Breach Of Duty Of Care Claims, Zien Halwani

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are a form of statutory pension program designed to invest employee retirement assets in the stock of the employer. Under the Employment Retirement and Income Securities Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), ESOP fiduciaries must discharge their duties “with the care, skill, prudence and diligence under the circumstances prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims.” This is to say that under ERISA, ESOP fiduciaries are liable for breaches of duty of care, …

Taking Trust Seriously In Privacy Law, Neil Richards, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

Trust is beautiful. The willingness to accept vulnerability to the actions of others is the essential ingredient for friendship, commerce, transportation, and virtually every other activity that involves other people. It allows us to build things, and it allows us to grow. Trust is everywhere, but particularly at the core of the information relationships that have come to characterize our modern, digital lives. Relationships between people and their ISPs, social networks, and hired professionals are typically understood in terms of privacy. But the way we have talked about privacy has a pessimism problem – privacy is conceptualized in negative terms, …

Fiduciary-Isms: A Study Of Academic Influence On The Expansion Of The Law, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

Fiduciary law aspires to nullify power imbalances by obligating strong parties to give themselves over to servient parties. For example, due to profound imbalances of legal know-how, lawyers must as fiduciaries pursue their clients’ interests, not their own, lest clients get lost in the competitive shuffle. As a peculiar hybrid of status and contract relations, politics and law, compassion and capitalism, fiduciary law is very much in vogue in academic circles. As vogue as it is, there remains room for my “Fiduciary-isms...”, a meditation on the expansion of fiduciary law from its origins in the law of trusts through partnerships, …