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Toward A Mission Statement For Mutual Funds In Shareholder Litigation, Sean J. Griffith, Dorothy Lund
Toward A Mission Statement For Mutual Funds In Shareholder Litigation, Sean J. Griffith, Dorothy Lund
Faculty Scholarship
This paper analyzes the conduct of mutual funds in shareholder litigation. We begin by reviewing the basic forms of shareholder litigation and the benefits such claims might offer mutual fund investors. We then investigate, though an in-depth docket review, whether and how the ten largest mutual funds participate in shareholder litigation. We find that although shareholder suits offer potential benefits, the largest mutual funds have essentially forfeited their use of litigation. This finding is particularly striking given that index funds and other long-term oriented mutual funds generally cannot sell their shares when they are dissatisfied with company performance, leaving them …
Contractual Arbitrage, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott
Contractual Arbitrage, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
Standard-form contracts are likely to be incomplete because they are not tailored to the needs of particular deals. In an attempt to reduce incompleteness, standard-form contracts often contain clauses with vague or ambiguous terms. Terms with indeterminate meaning present opportunities for strategic behavior well after a contract has been executed. This linguistic uncertainty in standard-form commercial contracts creates an opportunity for “contractual arbitrage”: parties may argue ex post that the uncertainties in expression mean something that the contracting parties did not contemplate ex ante. This chapter argues that the scope for contractual arbitrage is a direct function of the techniques …
A Mission Statement For Mutual Funds In Shareholder Litigation, Sean J. Griffith, Dorothy S. Lund
A Mission Statement For Mutual Funds In Shareholder Litigation, Sean J. Griffith, Dorothy S. Lund
Faculty Scholarship
This Article analyzes the conduct of mutual funds in shareholder litigation. We begin by reviewing the basic forms of shareholder litigation and the benefits such claims might offer mutual fund investors. We then investigate, through an in-depth docket review, whether and how the ten largest mutual funds participate in shareholder litigation. We find that although shareholder suits offer potential benefits, the largest mutual funds have essentially forfeited their use of litigation. This finding is particularly striking given that index funds and other long-term oriented mutual funds generally cannot sell their shares when they are dissatisfied with company performance, leaving them …
Rethinking The Impact Of Third-Party Funding On Access To Civil Justice, Victoria Sahani
Rethinking The Impact Of Third-Party Funding On Access To Civil Justice, Victoria Sahani
Faculty Scholarship
Third-party funding indisputably puts a gold-weighted thumb on the scales of justice in favor of funded parties for two main reasons: (1) funded cases already tend to be calculable winners on the merits, and (2) third-party funders seeking a profit generally do not fund cases that are demonstrably likely to lose on the merits. Thus, we are left with both the promising potential for winners to be more likely to win with third-party funding and the alarming realization that not all winners are offered this same chance. This provokes a larger, fundamental question: If funders are picking winners among the …