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Ann Lipton

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Ann M. Lipton is a Professor of Law and Laurence W. DeMuth Chair of Business Law at the University of Colorado Law School.  An experienced securities and corporate litigator who has handled class actions involving some of the world’s largest companies, she joined the Tulane Law faculty in 2015 after two years as a visiting assistant professor at Duke University School of Law.

As a scholar, Lipton explores corporate governance, the relationships between corporations and investors, and the role of corporations in society.  Read more.

A while back, I posted about an eyebrow-raising opinion out of the Second Circuit holding that clean audit opinions may not be material to investors because they use generic language.  Happily, the Second Circuit has agreed to take a second look at the issue, and invited the SEC to file an amicus brief, which it did.  (Alison Frankel has a column on the case here; the brief is linked here)

The brief is simple and makes the obvious point that the language of a clean audit opinion may be standardized, but its use reflects an industry understanding regarding the procedures used in the audit and the auditor’s conclusions.

One thing worth highlighting: As I explained in my original post, the way we seem to have gotten here is that the defendant auditor conducted a shoddy audit, but then argued that there was no link between its own audit deficiencies and the actual flaws in the underlying financial statements – i.e., even a proper audit would not have caught the problems.

The SEC argues that, even if true, that would not make the audit opinion immaterial; it might, however, affect the analysis of loss causation.  The distinction matters a…

Fights over advance notice bylaws are becoming more common; I previously posted about Paragon Technologies v. Cryan, and right after that, VC Will decided Kellner v. AIM Immunotech.  In both situations, boards were found to have been overly aggressive in drafting and enforcing their bylaws, and VC Will went case by case to determine which actions were permissible and which were not.  And since the dissidents had not fully complied with even the permissible bylaws, VC Will would not order that their nominees be permitted to stand for election.

This strikes me as such a difficult problem.  On the one hand, there are good reasons for these bylaws, as both the Paragon and AIM disputes make clear.  In Paragon, the dissident really was playing games about providing information regarding its plans; in AIM, the contest was a continuation of one spearheaded a year earlier by a convicted felon who tried to conceal his involvement.  So yeah, boards have really legitimate interests in ensuring that shareholders have full information.

On the other hand, the blue pencil approach – where the noncompliant bylaws are severed and the legitimate ones remain standing – strikes me as having the…

Look, it’s not like I want to post about Elon Musk every week, it’s just that he keeps doing things that result in interesting corporate governance conundrums.  So this week’s post covers several things, only one of which is a Musk thing.

The Musk Thing

After Chancellor McCormick struck down his Musk’s 2018 pay package, one bit of speculation that floated about was whether Musk could sue Tesla to recover the package, on some kind of restitution/quantum meruit theory.  My suspicion is that such a claim would be unlikely to succeed because Musk’s own fiduciary breaches are what led to the original forfeiture, and he who comes into equity must do so with clean hands.  Or, as the famous jurist Leo Rosten put it, it would be like “a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

But despite the dubious merit such a claim would have, given the close ties McCormick identified between Tesla’s board and Elon Musk, there would be a risk that the board would take a dive and settle unnecessarily.

(More under the cut)

Given all the news about Governor Abbott’s pitch to create a business law infrastructure that will compete with Delaware, and Musk’s threat to decamp there, it’s worth pointing out that this is an amendment that was recently proposed to the Texas Business Organizations Code:

BURDEN OF PROOF IN CERTAIN DERIVATIVE PROCEEDINGS. Notwithstanding any other law, in a derivative proceeding by a shareholder that alleges an act or omission related to the improper consideration of environmental, social, and governance criteria in the performance of the act or omission, the burden of proof is on the corporation to prove the act or omission was in the best interest of the corporation.

In 2022, Texas legislators proposed amending its law to permit shareholders to bring a fiduciary duty claim against the managers of any public company that provided women employees with travel benefits for abortion care (though, to be fair, in that case, the proposal would have applied even to non-Texas organized companies).

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been very vocal about his objections to ESG – he is among those suing to block a Department of Labor rule, among other things – and as Attorney General, he would, as I…

So, anything interesting happening in corporate law this week?

I kid, I kid. On Tuesday, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery issued her long-awaited opinion in Tornetta v. Musk, where she took the extraordinary step of holding that Elon Musk’s Tesla pay package from 2018 was not “entirely fair” to Tesla investors, and ordered that it be rescinded.  In practical effect, she ordered the cancelation of stock options worth about $51 billion, or, according to news reports, about a quarter of his current wealth.  Put that together with the Twitter purchase, the State of Delaware and Chancellor McCormick have cost Musk about $90 billion, give or take (though a contrary take would involve the words “actions” and “consequences”).

The legal standards

Normally, the decision of what to pay a corporate CEO – like any other business decision – is controlled by the board of directors, and not subject to second-guessing by a court.  But, like any other business decision, that changes if the executive pay package can be seen as self-dealing, namely, the decisionmakers have a financial interest in the arrangement.

In a normal company, that isn’t a problem; the corporate directors act at arm’s length…

So, there was a lot going on in Twitter v. Musk, some of it in the actual case, but much of it in the speculation of we legal types as we gamed out various potential scenarios.

One scenario that kept recurring was whether Delaware would in fact have the ability to actually enforce a judgment against Elon Musk, should he choose to simply defy court orders.  That was never a likely scenario; Musk is a repeat player in Delaware and it was never feasible for him to remain the CEO of a public company organized in Delaware while running from the Delaware courts.

But if that happened, it seemed one solution would be for Delaware to seize his Tesla shares, and his SpaceX shares, and then either sell them or more likely simply hold them until he complied with the judgment.  The logic was that, according to DGCL §169, shares of a Delaware corporation exist, in the abstract, within the state of Delaware, and Court of Chancery Rule 70 says:

If a judgment directs a party to execute a conveyance of land or to deliver deeds or other documents or to perform any other specific act and the party

…

This is a really interesting classroom case study.

As I originally blogged about here, it all begins with Spirit and Frontier agreeing to a stock deal – non-Revlon – and JetBlue swooping in with a topping cash bid.

Spirit’s management resisted, arguing that there was far more regulatory/antitrust risk with the JetBlue deal than with the Frontier deal.  But JetBlue kept insisting that regulatory risks could be managed, and offered an extremely generous set of reverse termination provisions if the deal was blocked (more on those in a minute).

Ultimately, Spirit’s management caved to the demands of its shareholders; it was clear they would reject Frontier in favor of JetBlue.  And the deal was, in fact, blocked on antitrust grounds.

The parties had agreed to use best efforts to complete the deal, including to appeal any court orders enjoining the merger.  As the agreement states:

both Parent and Company (and their respective Subsidiaries and Affiliates) shall contest, defend and appeal any Proceedings brought by a Governmental Entity, whether judicial or administrative, challenging or seeking to restrain or prohibit the consummation of the Merger or seeking to compel any divestiture by Parent or the Company or any

…

In two of his columns this week, Matt Levine highlighted this new company that purports to facilitate vote buying.  It invites passive retail holders to sell their votes to interested buyers.  Though the site itself mentions that buyers might be interested in influencing board selection, advancing ESG initiatives, or affecting takeover/merger decisions, in communications with Matt Levine, the company apparently emphasized the potential to use bought votes to obtain a quorum.  (As we all know, retail-heavy companies – especially SPACs – have had trouble with that recently). 

What no one seems to be talking about is whether any of this is actually legal, and the answer is – maybe?  Maybe not?

Delaware does not prohibit vote buying outright.  First, it draws a distinction between (1) where the company uses company resources to buy a vote; (2) where a third party uses its own resources to buy a vote.

The first is more troubling, because it raises the possibility of conflicted transactions.  For example, in Hewlett v. Hewlett-Packard, 2002 WL 549137 (Del. Ch. 2002), the plaintiffs alleged that HP allocated business to Deutsche Bank in order to persuade Deutsche Bank to vote shares held in its…

Tulane Law School invites applications for its Forrester Fellowship, which is designed for promising scholars who plan to apply for tenure-track law school positions. This is a full-time faculty position in the law school, and faculty are encouraged to participate in all aspects of the intellectual life of the school. The law school provides significant support and mentorship, a professional travel budget, and opportunities to present works-in-progress in faculty workshops. 

Tulane’s Forrester Fellows teach legal writing in the first-year curriculum to first-year law students in a program coordinated by the Director of Legal Writing. Fellows are appointed to a one-year term with the possibility of a single one-year renewal. Applicants must have a JD from an ABA-accredited law school, outstanding academic credentials, and significant law-related practice and/or clerkship experience. If you have any questions about this position, please contact Erin Donelon at edonelon@tulane.edu. Interested candidates may apply here: Apply – Interfolio

Qualifications

J.D. from ABA-accredited law school; practice and/or clerkship experience

Looking back, it’s funny how the issue of litigation limits in corporate constitutive documents has really been a throughline throughout my academic career; my first paper on the subject, Manufactured Consent: The Problem of Arbitration Clauses in Corporate Charters and Bylaws, was written when I was still a VAP.  So now it’s like a theme.

Anyhoo, as you all know, the latest set of developments occurred when the Delaware Supreme Court decided Salzberg v. Sciabacucchi, 227 A.3d 102 (Del. 2020), and approved the use of litigation limiting bylaws and charter provisions even for non Delaware claims, specifically, federal securities and antitrust claims.

That was part of what inspired my latest paper on the subject, Inside Out (or, One State to Rule them All): New Challenges to the Internal Affairs Doctrine, arguing, among other things, that other states pay too much deference to Delaware by automatically treating these provisions as contracts governed by Delaware law, rather than asking which law to apply, and whether the elements of contract are met.

Well, a new case has come up, EpicentRx, Inc. v. Superior Court, 95 Cal.App.5th 890.

EpicentRx is private, organized in Delaware but headquartered in California.  Its charter…