Business Organizations Law Commons^™

Information Privacy And Internet Company Insolvencies: When A Business Fails, Does Divesture Or Bankruptcy Better Protect The Consumer?, Farah Z. Usmani

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

The A.A. Sommer, Jr. Annual Lecture On Corporate Securities & Financial Law: Post-Enron America: An Sec Perspective, Harvey Goldschmid, William Treanor, John F.X. Peloso, Jill Fisch

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of The Section 3(A)(10) Exemption Under The Securities Act Of 1933 In The Context Of The Public Offering Component Of Section 3(C)(1) Of The Investment Company Act Of 1940, Marc F. Holzapfel

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Codetermination After Centros: Will German Corporate Law Move Closer To The U.S. Model?, Jens C. Dammann

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Gifts Of Family Llc Units In A Post-Hackl Era: Present Interests Or Future Interests?, Thomas S. Flickinger

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

To Shred Or Not To Shred: Document Retention Policies And Federal Obstruction Of Justice Statutes, Christopher R. Chase

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Improving Charitable Accountability, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article focuses upon a persistent problem of the nonprofit sector--its lack of accountability to the public. Director, officer, and organizational responsibilities will be analyzed. Past and current approaches to secure accountability of charitable assets will be discussed, and a proposal for improving charitable accountability will be suggested through the creation of public-private charity commissions at the state level under the aegis of the attorney general.

The Provisional Director Remedy For Corporate Deadlock: A Proposed Model Statute, Susanna M. Kim

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Virtue And Peace: Creating A Workplace Where People Can Flourish, Caryn L. Beck-Dudley, Steven H. Hanks

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In this Article, Professors Beck-Dudley and Hanks explore the virtues necessary for individuals to flourish within a business organization. Through this exploration, they conclude that modern discussions of business ethics fail to account for the value and virtue of peaceableness. Then, focusing on the freedom from conflict aspect of peaceableness, they use Champion Paper Products, Sartell Minnesota Paper Mill, as a case study in the significant improvements in human flourishing and organizational performance that can occur when management and labor choose peaceable solutions to labor conflicts.

Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This Article follows in the spirit of Karl Llewellyn and his fellow drafters of the Uniform Commercial Code who sought to transform merchant norms into law. The merchant norms discussed here are the procedures that sophisticated firms contract for to resolve anticipated valuation disputes. The law proposed is a new procedure for resolving valuation disputes based on commercial valuation norms. More specifically, this Article proposes a new default valuation procedure, modeled on the algorithmic valuation clauses commonly used in the contracts of sophisticated firms, that would encourage parties to valuation disputes to introduce more plausible valuations into evidence and …

Sorting Through The Soup: How Do Llcs, Llps And Lllps Fit Withing The Regulations And Legal Doctrines?, Daniel S. Kleinberger

Faculty Scholarship

In a children' book published in 1946, Ben Ross Berenberg described an imaginary amalgam called the churkendoose - "part chicken, turkey, duck and goose." In 1977, Wyoming invented a business law churkendoose: the limited liability company - part corporation, part general partnership, part limited partnership. That churkendoose has revolutionized the law of business organizations, becoming the vehicle of choice for tens of thousands of ventures every month and causing the IRS to radically overhaul its approach to taxing business entities. This article explores how preexisting regulatory and common law apply to LLCs and the related organizations known as limited liability …

Regulating Corporations: Who's Making The Rules, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Too Busy To Mind The Business? Monitoring By Directors With Multiple Board Appointments, Stephen P. Ferris, Murali Jagannathan, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

We examine the number of external appointments held by corporate directors. Directors who serve larger firms and sit on larger boards are more likely to attract directorships. Consistent with Fama and Jensen (1983), we find that firm performance has a positive effect on the number of appointments held by a director. We find no evidence that multiple directors shirk their responsibilities to serve on board committees. We do not find that multiple directors are associated with a greater likelihood of securities fraud litigation. We conclude that the evidence does not support calls for limits on directorships held by an individual.

Gprady, William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The George A. Leet Business Law Symposium: The Role Of Lawyers In Strategic Alliances - Introduction, George W. Dent

Faculty Publications

Introducation to The George A. Leet Business Law Symposium: The Role of Lawyers in Strategic Alliances, Cleveland, Ohio.

The Corporation As Symphony: Are Shareholders First Violin Or Second Fiddle?, Janis P. Sarra

All Faculty Publications

This article focuses on shareholders and whether the current regime affords them adequate protection and participation rights. Recent changes to corporate and securities laws have facilitated the exercise of shareholder voice. These changes are important to capital markets in that they are aimed at increasing investor confidence and hence the strength of markets. The lead in shareholder activism is being taken by institutional shareholders who are utilizing new proxy and proposal provisions to express governance preferences regarding key issues such as independence of audit committees and enhanced transparency in financial disclosures. However, there continue to be barriers that institutional and …

On The Proper Motives Of Corporate Directors (Or, Why You Don't Want To Invite Homo Economicus To Join Your Board), Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

One of the most important questions in corporate governance is how directors of public corporations can be motivated to serve the interests of the firm. Directors frequently hold only small stakes in the companies they manage. Moreover, a variety of legal rules and contractual arrangements insulate them from liability for business failures. Why then should we expect them to do a good job?

Conventional corporate scholarship has great difficulty wrestling with this question, in large part because conventional scholarship usually adopts the economist's assumption that directors are rational actors motivated purely by self-interest. This homo economicus model of behavior may …

Healthy Organizations And The Link To Peaceful Societies: Strategies For Implementing Organizational Change, Jeannette Jackson, Maria Coolican

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article focuses on the impact that the organizational structure of a corporation can have on fostering a peaceful outside world. In this Article, the Authors argue that if an organization is structured to meet the needs of its employees and also cares about its employees and their needs, then the employees will behave civilly and respectfully. Furthermore, the Authors argue that the organization structured in such fashion will then be conducive for healthy organizational growth and positive conflict resolution. The Article posits that families, schools, religious organizations, social groups, and business organizations all have the potential of contributing to …

When Good Mergers Go Bad: Controlling Corporate Managers Who Suffer A Change Of Heart, Celia R. Taylor

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Did The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act Work?, Michael A. Perino

Faculty Publications

In 1995 Congress passed the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (the PSLRA or the Act) to address abuses in securities fraud class actions. In the wake of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and other high profile securities frauds, critics suggest that the law made it too easy to escape liability for securities fraud and thus created a climate in which frauds are more likely to occur. Others claim that the Act has largely failed because it did little to deter plaintiffs' lawyers from filing nonmeritorious cases. This article employs a database of the 1449 class actions filed from 1996 through 2001 to …

Robust Public Debate: Realizing Free Speech In Workplace Representation Elections, Kate Andrias

Faculty Scholarship

The First Amendment stands as a guarantor of political freedom and as the “guardian of our democracy.” It seeks to expand the vitality of public discourse in order to enable Americans to become aware of the issues before them and to pursue their ends fully and freely. As the Supreme Court wrote in the canonical case of New York Times Co. v . Sullivan, the First Amendment’s function is to create the “uninhibited, robust and wide-open” public debate necessary for the exercise of self-governance.

The Amendment plays a prominent role in the regulation of workplace representation elections, the process …

Locking In Capital: What Corporate Law Achieved For Business Organizers In The Nineteenth Century, Margaret M. Blair

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article argues that corporate status became popular in the nineteenth century as a way to organize production because of the unique manner in which incorporation permitted organizers to lock in financial capital. Unlike participants in a partnership, shareholders in an incorporated enterprise could not extract capital from the firm without explicit approval of a board of directors charged with representing the interests of the incorporated entity, even when that interest might sometimes conflict with the interests of individual shareholders. While this ability to lock in capital has occasionally led to abuses, the ability to commit capital generally helped promote …

Ethics, Law Firms, And Legal Education, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A rash of recent corporate scandals has once again put professional ethics in the spotlight. It's hard to pick up the Wall Street Journal each day and not read that authorities have launched a new investigation or that additional indictments are imminent. Stories of financial fraud and outright looting have galvanized the public and shaken the economy. What ethical lessons can we draw from these events? Two explanations seem especially prominent. The first is a story of individuals without an adequate moral compass. Some people's greed and ambition were unchecked by any internal ethical constraints. For such deviants, no amount …

Redefining The Fiduciary Duties Of Corporate Directors In Accordance With The Team Production Model Of Corporate Governance, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article considers the "team production model" (TPM) of corporate governance set forth and elaborated upon by Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout. The author initially addresses how the locus of fiduciary duties should be respecified to be consistent with the TPM framework of corporate governance, should that paradigm be determined to be a descriptively more accurate model of public corporations than is the conventional agency mode, and then reviews the relatively complex calculations that would have to be carried out to determine how the performance of a TPM-style corporate board of directors measures up against these respecified fiduciary duties. Finally, …

Oklahoma Shareholder And Director Inspection Rights: Useful Discovery Tools?, Johnathan D. Horton

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreigners At The Gate: Foreign Direct Investment Regulations & Dispute Resolution Mechanisms In The People’S Republic Of China, George O. White Iii

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

The elevation of law over politics is very new in China and the extent to which it is to be taken seriously is not always clear to the Chinese involved. The Chinese official and the Chinese citizen are part of a political structure in which the Party’s will and policies have been the most effective law… Laws and regulations have to be understood in this wider context of a society in which the formal legal position is only one consideration and still often not the most important.

Corporate Responsibility And The Regulation Of Corporate Lawyers, James M. Mccauley

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

On July 30, 2002, in an effort to demonstrate to the American public a resolve to crack down on corporate scandals such as Enron, Adelphia, WorldCom, and Global Crossing, President Bush signed into law the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002”. Proclaiming that the new law will restore investor confidence, reform the oversight of public accounting and increase the transparency of corporate financial statements…

Emergence Of A Private Banking Sector In The Czech Republic, Phillip M. Stupak

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Innovation In Corporate Law, Katharina Pistor, Yoram Keinan, Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Mark D. West

Faculty Scholarship

In most countries large business enterprises today are organized as corporations. The corporation with its key attributes of independent personality, limited liability and free tradeability of shares has played a key role in most developed market economies since the 19th century and has made major inroads in emerging markets. We suggest that the resilience of the corporate form is a function of the adaptability of the legal framework to a changing environment. We analyze a country's capacity to innovate using the rate of statutory legal change, the flexibility of corporate law, and institutional change as indicators. Our findings suggest that …

Summary Of Nittinger V. Holman, Cami Perkins

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Respondents, Dedric Holman and Christina Edwards, were gambling at the Gold Coast Hotel when a physical confrontation arose between John Nittinger, a security guard, and Holman. When Holman tried to run, security officers pursued him and held him to the ground. According to Holman’s testimony, the guards made racial slurs, punched, kicked and beat him. The security shift supervisor was present during part of the incident. The district court instructed the jury that it could find the Gold Coast liable for punitive damages if a “managerial agent” authorized or ratified the guards’ conduct. The jury awarded respondents $198,000 in compensatory …