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Please forgive the self-promotion, but the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog recently published a blog post on my recent article with Professor Julie Hill, The Duty of Care of Bank Directors and Officers, 65 Ala. L. Rev. 965 (2017).

The blog post is reprinted below, and the link to the article is here:  https://ssrn.com/abstract=2965023

The 2008 financial crisis was catastrophic for the U.S. banking industry. Between 2007 and 2014, 510 banks failed. Another 700-plus banks received some type of federal monetary assistance. Unsurprisingly, this led to calls to hold bank directors and officers legally accountable for harm they may have caused.

One federal regulator with the power to hold directors and officers of failed banks financially responsible is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC acts as a receiver for failed banks. It has authority to sue directors and officers for losses they caused to failed banks and has been aggressive in doing so.  Yet even as the FDIC brings director and officer suits, the standard of liability for breach of the duty of care in the banking setting is misunderstood.

Duty of care liability in non-bank corporations is typically governed by state statute and common law.

The Section on Women in Legal Education (WILE) of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) recently announced that our business law colleague from Boston University, Tamar Frankel, is this year’s recipient of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award.  Kerri Stone, this year’s chair of the section, wrote the following in her message to section members on June 23:

Professor Frankel, a true pioneer and mentor to so many, will be honored at the Section’s annual luncheon on January 6, 2018 in San Diego. We hope to see all of you there as we reconvene, reconnect, and celebrate Professor Frankel.

I will add (briefly) that I have been personally mentored and supported by Tamar over the years (as I know many law faculty members have been).  She has acknowledged receipt of my reprints (a rare thing) with a pithy comment that indicates she actually read the piece (an even rarer thing).  Her work on money managers and trust law has inspired and founded the scholarship of many (including my own work).  Her comments offered at academic conferences over the years have been insightful and constructive.  She has climbed mountains in her life and career that were tall and…

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities Inc.  The case resolved a critical issue of class action administration that was left hanging after the Supreme Court dismissed an earlier-granted petition in a similar case (see my earlier posts on the subject).

In American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah, 414 U. S. 538 (1974), the Supreme Court held that the filing of a class action tolls the statute of limitations for all members of the putative class.  That way, if individual members wish to opt out and pursue their claims individually, or if the class is not certified and they are forced to file their own complaints, they are free to do so without fear of a limitations period that may have expired years earlier.  The rule has long been thought of as a practical necessity for the administration of class actions.  After all, class actions change over time – claims are dropped, class definitions are narrowed, class counsel may pursue remedies and settlements that don’t satisfy all class members.  If individual class members were not assured that they could file their own claims if any of these events occurred, they…

Next month, I will speak at a legal conference in Chicago. The invite-only audience will consist of in-house counsel, law firm partners, academics, and legal tech pioneers. The website for the conference has not been updated to reflect my new school or topic, but I have titled my talk “Why Lawyers Need to Demand that Law Schools Innovate or Die.” In the 20 minutes allotted to me, I hope to discuss the state of legal education, the bar passage crisis in so many states, what the bar should test on, the push for “practice-ready” graduates, the effect of the rise of artificial intelligence, and what law schools can and should do differently to educate tomorrow’s lawyers. It’s a good thing I’m a fast talker.

I will be looking at the programs mentioned in this article as well as some innovations mentioned in this article, which mentions my institution, the University of Miami and its LawWithoutWalls program, which I have participated in since its inception in 2011. In fact one of my LWOW mentees, Margaret Hagan, now heads a program at Stanford, which I will highlight.

I have a few questions for the readers, as I prepare…

The second season premiere of Queen Sugar, a television adaptation of Natalie Baszile’s novel, aired earlier this week, and if you’re the kind of person who likes to catch pop cultural depictions of business issues, this is a nice sleeper to add to your viewing list.  It airs on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network, and was created by Selma director Ava DuVernay.  (Interestingly, in a departure from most Hollywood productions, every episode is directed by a woman.) 

Queen Sugar is about three black siblings who inherit their father’s ailing sugarcane farm in Louisiana (I admit, there’s a bit of provincialism to my fondness for this show – it takes place just outside of New Orleans), and struggle to turn it into a viable business. 

Nova, an investigative journalist specializing in the racial disparities of the Louisiana criminal justice system, has difficulty reconciling her political commitments and her romantic life.  Ralph Angel, the little brother, was recently released from prison, and his efforts to raise his young son are hobbled by lingering legal limitations and what he perceives as his ongoing infantilization at the hands of his older sisters and his aunt.

Charley, the show’s main focus, is a business…