Business Organizations Law Commons^™

The Survival Of The Derivative Suit: An Evaluation And A Proposal For Legislative Reform, John C. Coffee Jr., Donald E. Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

The shareholder derivative suit today faces extinction. Long considered the "chief regulator of corporate management," and a recognized form of litigation in American courts at least since 1855, it now confronts the second great challenge of its history. Thirty-odd years ago, commentators foresaw the derivative suit's demise when state legislatures began adopting security-for-expenses statutes to curb the abuses of "strike suit" litigation. These reports of its death proved exaggerated, however, as plaintiffs discovered various tactics by which to outflank these statutes. As a result, by the late 1960's, the crisis was past, and a revival in the action's popularity was …

Employee Stock Ownership Plans: An Analysis Of Current Reform Proposals, Luis L. Granados

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article surveys the battle between the critics and advocates of the ESOP, and scrutinizes various proposals currently being considered in the legislative arena. Part I examines the philosophy and history of the ESOP, particularly focusing upon the conceptual foundations provided by the writings of Louis Kelso. Part II explicates the various functions performed by the ESOP: as a tool of corporate finance, as an "in-house" market for the sale of stock held by a company's shareholders, and as a means of obtaining additional investment tax credit. Part III analyzes critically six proposed improvements of the ESOP system from both …

Keys To Unlock The Interlocks: Dealing With Interlocking Directorates, Richard P. Murphy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The use of interlocking directorates by American industrial and commercial corporations is widespread. Section 8 of the Clayton Act has been interpreted as prohibiting only interlocks between directly competing firms. There are other kinds of interlocks with substantial anticompetitive effects, however, that have essentially escaped any regulation under the antitrust laws. This article will examine whether the deleterious effects of unregulated interlocks should be a source of concern. It will conclude that these interlocks should not remain unregulated because they are presumptively anticompetitive, produce problems that section 8 was designed to address, and conflict with the basic goals of the …

Restructuring The Corporate Board Of Directors: Fond Hope--Faint Promise?, Lewis D. Solomon

Michigan Law Review

Reforms, then, have been instituted, and an extensive literature on corporate reform has developed. It is time that we seriously examine the reforms and the literature to assess the accomplishments and possibilities of the corporate board of directors. This Article is a first step in that direction.

The Article begins by investigating the reasons for the impotence of corporate boards. It then examines two models of reformed boards and finds both models badly flawed. The Article proceeds to case studies of three corporations-Mattel, Inc., Northrop Corp., and Lockheed Corp.-which under court· order have attempted to reform their boards by increasing …

Beyond The Shut-Eyed Sentry: Toward A Theoretical View Of Corporate Misconduct And An Effective Legal Response, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Like hard cases, festering scandals make bad law. As public perceptions shift so that conduct once tolerated becomes seen as illicit, political pressures develop that can result in hastily improvised responses by the legal system to fill the newly perceived vacuum. This generalization is advanced to question neither the inalienable right of the public to be scandalized, nor the need for corporate reform, but to approach a highly problematic dilemma: hurried, moralistic responses to a perceived evil often prove not only ineffective, but even counterproductive. The serious student of complex organizations may recognize this assertion as a slightly altered variant …

The Structure Of The Private Multinational Enterprise, Yitzhak Hadari

Michigan Law Review

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, society has experienced the persistent tendency of business organizations to expand. Businesses evolved from the rural workshop to the urban factory; from the municipal firm to the regional firm and then to the national enterprise. More recently, enterprises have expanded even further, from national firms with small export outlets to huge multinational enterprises (MNEs) embracing business operations all over the globe coordinated under a single management. Yet, along with its beneficial results for the peoples of the world, each new economic era brings with it new problems as well.

The conflict between the …

An Overview Of The Laws Of Corporations, Alfred F. Conard

Michigan Law Review

During the twentieth century, legislatures found it necessary to enact great masses of additional legislation to deal with the special problems of corporations. People who worked with the entire group of relevant laws were known as "corporation lawyers." But, like Londoners, they continued to regard as "corporation laws" only those few that covered the same points embraced by the laws of the Victorian era. The others carried distinct sobriquets.

This usage leads to a confusion in speaking about the "laws of corporations," since they are so much broader than "corporation laws." It would be hard, though, for a reader to …

Invalid Election And Involuntary Termination Of Subchapter S Status

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Controlling The Controllers In Parent-Subsidiary Relations, James C. Bruno

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article will examine the rights and responsibilities of a party in control of a corporation. The discussion of these rights and responsibilities focuses principally on the law of Michigan. However, passages on policy, discussion of the development of relevant Michigan law, and recommendations for changes in the law are pertinent to the general problem-area of parent-subsidiary relations encountered in all jurisdictions.

Corporations - Officers And Directors - Agreement Interfering With Management By Board Of Directors, Edward H. Hoenicke S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiffs, minority stockholders in a closely held corporation, asked that the court declare invalid an agreement between the majority stockholders and their "agent-directors" for the management of the business. The agreement provided that for ten years the stock of the parties to the agreement would be voted as a unit as any seven of the agents should direct or, if they could not agree, as directed by an arbitrator chosen by them. The agents were to be elected to the board of directors by the stockholders who appointed them. Under a cumulative voting provision, the parties to the agreement had …

A Comparative Study Of The Laws Of The Philippine Islands And Of The United States Of America Applicable To Private Corporations, Emilio M. Javier

SJD Dissertations

The main objective of the present treatise is to expound the similarities and dissimilarities of the laws of the Philippine Islands and of the United States of America applicable to private corporations. Act 1459, otherwise known as the Philippine Corporation Law, as amended and as radically modified recently, in many or its important provisions, by Act 3518, is made the basis of discussion from the Philippine view point. All the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Islands interpreting the provisions of the law, and which the author considers pertinent, are also discussed herein. Due to the fact that each …

Purchase Of Shares Of Corporation By A Director From A Shareholder, Harold R. Smith

Michigan Law Review

As suggested by the title to this paper, a discussion of the relationship between the directors of a corporation and the corporate entity is not within its scope. Neither is the lrelationship between the directors-and the entire body of the shareholders. These two subjects are generally treated in another branch of the law of corporations and generally are not governed by the same rules of law.' The purchase of shares of stock by a director from a nonofficial shareholder naturally brings into question the relationship between the director and the shareholder in his individual capacity, and not in his capacity …

Respective Rights Of Preferred And Common Stockholders In Surplus Profits, George Jarvis Thompson

Michigan Law Review

The movement in the field of co5perative commercial undertakings has been; school-book-like, a movement from the simple to the complex, from the common-la* sitaation of persons associating together to conduct a busines for profit to the modern statutory association and the corporation possessing an enormous capital ,derived from a host of individuals whose respective interests are represented -by various -classes -of transferable shares.

Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1

Right Of Joint Adventurers Holding All The Stock Of A Corporation To A Dissolution And Accounting In Equity, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

The case of Jackson v. Hooper, in the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, decided February 28, 1910, by Judge DILL, (42 N. Y. Law Journal, March 8, 1910), overruling Vice Chancellor HOWELL, of the Court of Chancery (74 AtL. 130) presents interesting and unusual points in corporation and partnership law, and the jurisdiction of courts of equity over corporate affairs.

Cases On The General Principles Of The Law Of Private Corporations, Volume 2, Horace L. Wilgus

Books

In the first volume, and in the first two titles of the second volume, are considered the doctrines relating to the birth, life, powers, acts, obligations, and death of a corporation, effort being made to get a view of the general principles of the whole.

This second volume, with the exception of the first two titles, deals with the Corporation as a Subject and Source of Peculiar Rights and Obligations in its twofold aspect of Corporate Relations and Individual Relations.

Cases On The General Principles Of The Law Of Private Corporations, Volume 1, Horace L. Wilgus

Books

This work is designed to furnish those interested in the study of Corporation Law, -whether practitioner, teacher or student, - such material from the original sources, and in such order, as will show how reason and experience have dealt with the subject. Effort has been made in the selection to secure the best expression of the underlying reason or theory; to place these in such order as to develop, in a natural way, the general theory of Corporation Law, set forth in the table of contents; to insert such notes as will present a more comprehensive view of some of …

A Study Of The United States Steel Corporation In Its Industrial And Legal Aspects; Being Three Lectures Delivered To The Class In Private Corporations, In The University Of Michigan, June 3, 4 And 5, 1901, Horace L. Wilgus

Books

When the. class in corporations asked me to lecture upon the United States Steel Corporation, I replied I had not at band such of the documents use.d in its organization as would justify a legal discussion, and I did not wish to rely upon newspaper reports as to their contents. I promised, however, to try to secure authentic information. In order to do this, I wrote Messrs. J. P. Horgan & Co., requesting copies of such papers as were not considered private, stating what use was to be made of them. In reply to this request, they very kindly sent …