October 2014

Minor Myers and Charles Korsmo have a new paper that compares fiduciary duty merger litigation to appraisal litigation to determine whether fiduciary duty claims add any value for shareholders. 

After scrutinizing takeover challenges between 2004 and 2013, they find that the larger the deal, the more likely it is to be targeted in a fiduciary duty class action.  By contrast, whether there is a smaller merger premium – regardless of deal size – does not appear to be correlated with class action litigation.  Appraisal litigation, however, works differently; plaintiffs who bring appraisal claims tend to do so when the merger premium is low, regardless of deal size.

They also found that fiduciary suits are not associated with an increase in merger consideration.  I.e., they do not generate statistically significant benefits to shareholders.

Myers and Korsmo conclude from this that fiduciary duty class actions are not usually based on merit, and that such actions are brought for their nuisance value.  They recommend changes to the structure of fiduciary litigation, such as allowing investors who acquire stock after the deal announcement to serve as lead plaintiff, and switching to an opt-in model.

But there’s a wrinkle that comes in the form of…

My co-blogger Stefan Padfield passed along this article from The New York Times Dealbook on the social network Ello.

Ello is a Delaware public benefit corporation. The social enterprise terminology is proving difficult, even for sophisticated authors at the New York Times Dealbook. The article calls Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s public benefit corporations. Patagonia, however, is a California benefit corporation. I wrote about the differences between public benefit corporations and benefit corporations here. Ben & Jerry’s is a certified B corporation, but, as far as I know, Ben & Jerry’s has not yet made the legal change to convert to any of the social enterprise forms. I wrote about the differences between benefit corporations and certified B corporations here and here. Just as my co-blogger Joshua Fershee remains vigilant at pointing out the differences between LLCs and corporations, so I will remain vigilant on the social enterprise distinctions. 

Besides my nitpicking on the use of social enterprise terminology, there are a few other things I want to say about this article.     

First, Ello raised $5.5 million dollars, which is not that much money in the financial world, but puts Ello in…

I used to joke that my alma mater Columbia University’s core curriculum, which required students to study the history of art, music, literature, and philosophy (among other things) was designed solely to make sure that graduates could distinguish a Manet from a Monet and not embarrass the university at cocktail parties for wealthy donors. I have since tortured my son by dragging him through museums and ruins all over the world pointing spouting what I remember about chiaroscuro and Doric columns. He’s now a freshman at San Francisco Art Institute, and I’m sure that my now-fond memories of class helped to spark a love of art in him. I must confess though that as a college freshman I was less fond of  Contemporary Civilization class, (“CC”) which took us through Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Hume, Hegel, and all of the usual suspects. At the time I thought it was boring and too high level for a student who planned to work in the gritty city counseling abused children and rape survivors.

Fast forward twenty years or so, and my job as a Compliance and Ethics Officer for a Fortune 500 company immersed me in many of the principles…

Mohsen Manesh (Oregon) has posted a new article entitled Nearing 30, Is Revlon Showing Its Age?  I have read a fair number of Mohsen’s articles and am consistently impressed.

The abstract reads:

Nearly thirty years ago, in Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., the Delaware Supreme Court famously dictated that in certain transactions involving a “sale or change in control,” the fiduciary obligation of a corporation’s board of directors is simply to “get[] the best price for the stockholders.” Applying a novel remedial perspective to this iconic doctrine, in The Dwindling of Revlon, Professor Lyman Johnson and Robert Ricca argue that Revlon is today of diminishing significance. In the three decades since, the coauthors observe, corporate law has evolved around Revlon, dramatically limiting the remedial clout of the doctrine. In this Essay, I show how two recent Delaware Chancery Court decisions — Chen v. Howard-Andersen and In re Rural Metro — underscore the expansive reach of Revlon and, therefore, the limits of Johnson and Ricca’s thesis. Instead, I suggest the dwindling of Revlon, if it is indeed dwindling, may be best observed from what is happening outside the pressed edges of corporate law, where other competing bodies of

…

In response to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Proposed Regulation and Request for Comments regarding the definition of “eligible organization” (see earlier post here) at least two groups of law professors have weighed in on the issue.

The first comment letter, available here, was submitted by the U.C. Berkeley corporate law professors and encourages the Department to adopt a definition based upon the veil piercing theory.  “We … propose that for purposes of defining an “[W]e … suggest that shareholders of a corporation should have to certify that they and the corporation have a unity in identity and interests, and therefore the corporation should be viewed as the shareholders’ alter ego.”  The comments argue that utilizing the veil-piercing theory avoids the consequences of a setting an arbitrary number of shareholders thus creating a rule that would be “seriously under-and-over-inclusive, capturing corporations that meet the numerical test but for which shareholders are not the alter egos of the corporation, as well as failing to capture corporations with a relatively large number of shareholders that are all united in their interests and are alter egos of one another.”

The second comment letter on which I worked and was…

Below is a call for papers that I received by e-mail earlier today.  

RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS

Law and Ethics of Big Data

April 17 & 18, 2015

Indiana University- Bloomington, IN.

Abstract Submission Deadline: January 17, 2015

A research colloquium, “Law and Ethics of Big Data,” co-hosted by Professor Angie Raymond of Indiana University and Janine Hiller of Virginia Tech, is sponsored by the Center for Business Intelligence and Analytics in the Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech; the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University; and the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions at Indiana University.

Up to six invitations for research presentation slots will be extended based on this call for papers. In order to receive consideration, researchers are invited to submit an abstract by January 17, 2015.

In Business Organizations today, I spent some time reviewing the differences between varying entity types.  I made the point that courts often make mistakes on this front, especially with LLCs and corporations, and it reminded me I needed to follow up on my own pet LLC protection project. 

Over the years, I have taken more than a passing interest in how often courts refer to (and ultimately treat) LLCs. I have this thing where I think LLCs are not treated as well doctrinally as they should. In February of this month, I made the argument,  Courts Should Get the Doctrinal Distinction Between LLCs and Corporations, and I have made other similar arguments (here, here, and here).  

As part of this I committed to noting when courts refer to LLCs as “limited liability corporations” and not “limited liability companies,” as they should.  Almost one year ago, I noted this continuing theme, repeating the search I did for a 2011 article, where I found in a May 2011 search of Westlaw’s “ALLCASES” database that there were 2,773 documents with the phrase “limited liability corporation,” in describing an LLC. (That article is here.)  Things are not getting much better.

I typically teach Corporate Finance as a planning and drafting course to 3L law students in the fall semester each academic year.  (See my part of this transcription for some details.)  This year is no different in that regard.  I really like my Corporate Finance class this fall.  The students all seem pretty motivated (although not in every class meeting) and are asking relevant “how to” questions in class.

I am in the midst of teaching my unit on convertible, exchangeable, and derivative instruments at the moment.  This semester, I am teaching that unit in three 75-minute parts (after teaching one 75-minute class on hybrid instruments).  The first part is an introduction to the instruments themselves.  What are they and how do they operate?  Where are the provisions authorizing them in state corporate law statutes?  What do they look like and what are the key components of the operative (conversion, exchange, or exercise) provisions?  The second part is a dive into the poison pill as an intriguing example.  The third part is a look at common litigation issues affecting parties’ rights under these kinds of instruments (focusing on things like the characterization of transactions not expressly provided for in determining…

The following announcement comes to us from Alicia Plerhoples (Georgetown).  The 14th annual transactional clinic conference will be held at UMKC School of Law in Kansas City, Missouri and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is serving as a host partner. Proposals are due by December 15, 2014 and more information about the conference is available after the break.

14TH ANNUAL TRANSACTIONAL CLINICAL CONFERENCE

CALL FOR PROPOSALS, PAPERS, & PANELISTS

Teaching and Writing Methods of the Transactional Clinician

This year’s conference theme is Teaching and Writing Methods of the Transactional Clinician. The conference will have two tracks: (1) a “Nuts & Bolts” Teacher Workshop and (2) a “Pen & Paper” Scholarship Workshop. The Planning Committee seeks proposals for (1) presentations, (2) papers, and (3) panelists as outlined below.