Corporations

Subscribe to Corporations via RSS

One of the most striking lines in Provost Jeff Van Duzer’s talk at the Nashville Institute of Faith and Work a few months ago was his statement that “even bank robbers can tithe.”

See a somewhat similar version of that talk here.

Jeff Van Duzer’s point seemed to be that you cannot be a truly socially responsible company simply by giving some money to good causes. I think he was exactly right. He went on to explain that socially responsible businesses should focus on creating good products and good jobs. 

This week I was thinking about Jeff Van Duzer’s talk when I considered, for about the one hundredth time, how to define social enterprises.

Think about Ben & Jerry’s, a company that comes up at almost every social enterprise conference. While I can think of some good that ice cream does, I wonder if Ben & Jerry’s main products are, on the whole, socially beneficial. We have a serious, deadly obesity problem in the country, and Ben & Jerry’s products seem to be contributing to this problem. Perhaps Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is more healthy than most options or uses more natural ingredients (I am unsure if this is true), but are Ben…

Regular readers know that I monitor courts and other legal outlets for improper references to LLCs as “limited liability corporations” when the writer means “limited liability companies.” I get a Westlaw update every day. Really. Every day. So while it may seem that I write about examples a lot, I tend to think I am showing great restraint.  

At times, this is just a semantic issue, or at least a more amorphous “how one thinks about entities” issue.  Usually, at a minimum such cases can cause confusion about entity type and what laws apply, which may eventually lead courts to an improper analysis and application of the wrong laws.  It certainly leads some lawyers to incorrectly characterize their clients and their cases.  

For example, a recent case from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington gets the law right, but still creates some potential confusion. Consider this excerpt: 

Cash & Carry asserts that the court’s jurisdiction is based on diversity of citizenship. (Not. at 2.) For purposes of assessing diversity, the court must consider the domicile of all members of a limited liability company. Johnson v. Columbia Props. Anchorage, LP, 437 F.3d 894, 899 (9th Cir. 2006) (“[A]n LLC

…

On June 8, I will answer this and other questions during an interactive session for a group of social entrepreneurs at Venture Cafe in Miami. Fortunately, I will have an accountant with me to talk through some of the tax issues. I was invited by the director of Radical Partners, a social impact accelerator. We estimate that 75% of the audience members will work for a nonprofit and the rest will work in traditional for profit entities with a social mission.

Many entrepreneurs in South Florida have an interest in benefit corporations, but don’t really know much about them. Our job is to provide some guidance on entity selection and demystify these relatively new entities. Some of the issues I plan to address in my 20 minutes are:

1) the differences between nonprofits, for profits, and benefit corporations

2) the differences between benefit and social purpose corporations (focusing on Florida law)

3) the biggest myths about benefit corporations (such as perceived tax benefits)

4) tax issues (for the accountant)

5) director duties

6) funding- changing funding model from donors to investors; going public

7) reporting, auditing, and certification requirements

8) benefit enforcement proceedings

9) the role of B Lab and the…

I ask my Advanced Business Associations students to recognize and process theory and policy and relate them to doctrine at the practical level.  This is, as most of you will recognize, a tall order of business for students who have just recently learned what business associations law is and may not yet (at the time they take the course) have applied the law in a practical context outside the classroom.  (The course is open to 2L and 3L students who have already taken Business Associations.)

So, when it came time to lionize my friends Lyman Johnson and David Millon at a symposium honoring their work (which, as you may recall, I first heralded on the BLPB a year ago and wrote a bit about back in October), I decided to put my scholarship pen (keyboard) where my teaching mouth is.  My goal for the symposium was to write something that linked theory and policy through doctrine to law practice and, at the same time, incorporated Lyman’s and David’s work. The essay I produced in fulfillment of these objectives was recently released and posted to SSRN.  I excerpted from it in my post on Saturday.  The full SSRN abstract follows.

In context, corporate law is often credited with creating, hewing to, or reinforcing a shareholder wealth maximization norm. The now infamous opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. describes the norm in a relatively bald and narrow way: “A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders.” As a matter of theory and policy, commentators from the academy (law and business) and practice (lawyers and judges) have taken various views on this asserted norm—ranging from characterizing the norm as nonexistent or oversimplified to maintaining it as simple fact.

In an effort to broaden the conversation about the shareholder wealth maximization norm in an applied context, this essay describes shareholder wealth maximization under various state laws (in and outside Delaware) as a function of firm-level corporate governance—corporate law statutes, decisional law interpreting and filling gaps in that statutory law, and corporate charter and bylaw provisions—as applicable to both publicly held and privately held corporations in a variety of states. In this overall context, the essay considers the possibility that holders of shares in for-profit corporations may desire to maximize overall utility in their shareholdings of a particular firm, rather than merely the financial wealth arising from those holdings. To accomplish its purpose, the essay first briefly and generally addresses shareholder wealth maximization as a function of applicable statutory and decisional law and as a matter of private ordering (collecting, synthesizing, and characterizing, in each case, points made in the extant literature) before suggesting the broad implications of that analysis for corporate governance and shareholder wealth maximization and concluding. Ultimately, the essay makes a case for a more nuanced look at the shareholder wealth maximization norm. Given differences in doctrine and public policy among the states and variance in that doctrine and public policy among public, private, and statutory close or closely held corporations within individual states, answers to open questions are likely to (and should) depend on individualized facts assessed through the lens of specific statutory and decisional law and applicable public policy.

I fear that this short piece does not do the subject (or Lyman and David’s amazing work) justice.  But my biggest regret is that the essay went to press without the addition of thanks to two special folks in my author’s footnote.  I want to call those two colleagues out here.  

Loyalty has been in the news lately.  The POTUS, according to some reports, asked former Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) Director James Comey to pledge his loyalty.  Assuming the basic veracity of those reports, was the POTUS referring to loyalty to the country or to him personally?  Perhaps both and perhaps, as Peter Beinart avers in The Atlantic, the POTUS and others fail to recognize a distinction between the two.  Yet, identifying the object of a duty can be important.

I have observed that the duty of government officials is not well understood in the public realm. Donna Nagy’s fine work on this issue in connection with the proposal of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (“STOCK”) Act, later adopted by Congress, outlines a number of ways in which Congressmen and Senators, among others, may owe fiduciary duties to others.  If you have not yet been introduced to this scholarship, I highly recommend it.  If we believe that government officials are entrusted with information, among other things, in their capacity as public servants, they owe duties to the government and its citizens to use that information in authorized ways for the benefit of that government and those citizens.  In fact, Professor Nagy’s congressional testimony as part of the hearings on the STOCK Act includes the following in this regard:

Given the Constitution’s repeated reference to public offices being “of trust,” and Members’ oath of office to “faithfully discharge” their duties, I would predict that a court would be highly likely to find that Representatives and Senators owe fiduciary-like duties of trust and confidence to a host of parties who may be regarded as the source of material nonpublic congressional knowledge. Such duties of trust and confidence may be owed to, among others:

  • the citizen-investors they serve;
  • the United States;
  • the general public;
  • Congress, as well as the Senate or the House;
  • other Members of Congress; and
  • federal officials outside of Congress who rely on a Member’s loyalty and integrity.

There is precious little in federal statutes, regulations, and case law on the nature–no less the object–of any fiduciary the Director of the FBI may have.  The authorizing statute and regulations provide little illumination.  Federal court opinions give us little more.  See, e.g., Banks v. Francis, No. 2:15-CV-1400, 2015 WL 9694627, at *3 (W.D. Pa. Dec. 18, 2015), report and recommendation adopted, No. CV 15-1400, 2016 WL 110020 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 11, 2016) (“Plaintiff does not identify any specific, mandatory duty that the federal officials — Defendants Hornak, Brennan, and the FBI Director— violated; he merely refers to an overly broad duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to see justice done.”).  Accordingly, any applicable fiduciary duty likely would arise out of agency or other common law.  Section 8.01 of the Restatement (Third) of Agency provides “An agent has a fiduciary duty to act loyally for the principal’s benefit in all matters connect with the agency relationship.”  

But who is the principal in any divined agency relationship involving the FBI Director?  

I try to watch at least one Ted Talk a day. I learn new substantive topics and I also learn from listening to the speakers break down complex topics in an engaging way–a key skill for the classroom. I don’t know that any of the videos in a recent article written for business people really transformed my thinking about business, but I did find some parts interesting and inspiring.

Here they are for your viewing pleasure:

The Legal Skills Prof Blog has posted an article entitled Our Broken Bar Exam by Deborah Jones Merritt. The post discusses Merritt’s proposal for a task force on the bar exam. Merritt’s article states, among other things:

The bar exam is broken: it tests too much and too little. On the one hand, the exam forces applicants to memorize hundreds of black-letter rules that they will never use in practice. On the other hand, the exam licenses lawyers who don’t know how to interview a client, compose an engagement letter, or negotiate with an adversary.
 
This flawed exam puts clients at risk. It also subjects applicants to an expensive, stressful process that does little to improve their professional competence… The bar examination should test the ability of an applicant to identify legal issues in a statement of facts, such as may be encountered in the practice of law, to engage in a reasoned analysis of the issues, and to arrive at a logical solution by the application of fundamental legal principles, in a manner which demonstrates a thorough understanding of these principles… Why doesn’t our definition of minimum competence include cognitive skills that are essential for effective client…

It’s exam-grading time, so my focus is largely on that.  I did do my usual peruse of the news, though, and I found a whole host of news outlets discussing President Trump’s tax plan, which proposes to lower income tax rates on pass-through entities.  As one of the pieces explains: 

Pass-through income, for those of you who aren’t tax nerds, is business income that’s reported on a personal return. It comes from partnerships, limited-liability corporations and other closely held businesses, including Trump’s own family real estate operation.

First of all, knowing about pass-through income does not make you a tax nerd. I don’t think. 

Beyond that, though, limited liability corporations are not a thing.  And, limited liability companies (LLCs) are generally chosen for pass-though tax status, but they don’t have to be. They can chose to be taxed as C corporations at the federal level, if they wish.  Furthermore, partnerships, such as MLPs, and LLCs don’t have to be closely held. They can be publicly traded.  

Multiple outlets got on the incorrect”limited-liability corporations” bandwagon. Even Barron’s! Oh, well.. For now, I guess I will just continue to note that LLCs are still limited liability companies.  …

Last week, a reporter interviewed me regarding conflict minerals.The reporter specifically asked whether I believed there would be more litigation on conflict minerals and whether the SEC’s lack of enforcement would cause companies to stop doing due diligence. I am not sure which, if any, of my remarks will appear in print so I am posting some of my comments below:

I expect that if conflict minerals legislation survives, it will take a different form. The SEC asked for comments at the end of January, and I’ve read most of the comment letters. Many, including Trillium Asset Management, focus on the need to stay the course with the Rule, citing some success in making many mines conflict free. Others oppose the rule because of the expense. However, it appears that the costs haven’t been as high as most people expected, and indeed many of the tech companies such as Apple and Intel have voiced support for the rule. It’s likely that they have already operationalized the due diligence. The SEC has limits on what it can do, so I expect Congress to take action, unless there is an executive order from President Trump, which people have been expecting since February. 
 
The Senate

…

Ratings behemoth Bill O’Reilly is out of a job at Fox News “after thorough and careful review of the [sexual harassment] allegations” against him by several women. Fox had settled with almost half a dozen women before these allegations came to light, causing advertisers to leave in droves once the media reported on it. According to one article, social media activists played a major role in the loss of dozens of sponsors. Despite the revelations, or perhaps in a show of support, O’Reilly’s ratings actually went up even as advertisers pulled out. Fox terminated O’Reilly– who had just signed a new contract worth $20 million per year– the day before its parent company’s board was scheduled to meet to discuss the matter. The employment lawyer in me also wonders if the company was trying to preempt any negligent retention liability, but I digress.

An angry public also took to social media to expose United Airlines’ after its ill-fated decision to have a passenger forcibly removed from his seat to make room for crew members. However, despite the estimated 3.5 million impressions on Twitter of #BoycottUnited, the airline will not likely suffer financially in the long term because…