I did a Lexis search, and found zero citations to Dodge v. Ford in the New York Times (though it appears there was at least one online reference in 2015), and only three in the Wall Street Journal – two of which were factual recitations regarding the history of corporate governance debates.

The third was yesterday’s op-ed, arguing that the shareholders of the companies that quit Trump’s manufacturing council (an issue discussed earlier this week by Marcia), as well as shareholders of other companies that purport to take a “moral” stance, should sue corporate executives for destroying shareholder value.  The authors, Jon L. Pritchett and Ed Tiryakian, argued:

Memo to activist CEOs: Dust off your notes, open your textbooks, and reread the basics of corporate finance taught at every credible university. The fiduciary responsibility of a CEO is to safeguard the company’s assets and acknowledge this overriding principle: “It’s not our money but that of the shareholders.”

In today’s heated political climate, some executives have rejected the fundamentals in favor of short-term publicity for themselves and their corporations. When several CEOs quickly resigned over the past few days from the now-disbanded White House Council on Manufacturing, they cited personal views or political disagreement as their reason for leaving. Those may be truthful reasons, but are they in the best interests of the companies they represent? Wouldn’t shareholders be better off with their interests represented in this powerful group of government officials who control regulatory policy?

…

In the landmark 1919 case Dodge v. Ford, the Michigan Supreme Court laid out the ruling that has guided corporate America ever since. Ford Motor Co. must make decisions in the interests of its shareholders, the court ruled, rather than in a charitable manner.

As any business law professor knows – and as Marcia made clear in her earlier post – the matter is not nearly that simple.  Even if we accept a pure shareholder wealth maximization frame, what would it mean for these companies’ ability to function if they remained?  #SoupNazi became a popular hashtag on Twitter to force Denise Morrison of Campbell’s Soup to quit the council; the celebrity endorsements of Under Armour may have been under threat due to Kevin Plank’s presence, and employees of Silicon Valley were in open revolt over their leaders’ cooperation with the Trump administration, which just goes to show why Dodge v. Ford is generally considered not good law, at least to the extent it proposes that courts second-guess the wisdom of business decisions.

That said, there’s the macro-level view.  Political instability is bad for business.  The perception that America strives for certain moral ideals, and its adherence to the rule of law, are good for business.  It’s reached the point where multiple companies are listing Trump as a risk factor in their SEC filings. 

America’s CEOs may have limited options for pressuring for more stability – and refusing to lend their credibility to Trump’s (largely ceremonial) business councils may be one of the few tools available.

In conclusion:

 

 

Jodi D. Taylor, a shareholder at the law firm Baker Donelson and a former classmate of mine, recently won the firm’s Work-Life Warrior Award. “Baker Donelson established the Work-Life Warrior Award to honor an attorney in the Firm who demonstrates an ongoing commitment to excellence in maintaining a healthy work-life balance or has advocated on behalf of work-life balance issues for the benefit of others.” Jodi graciously accepted my request to answer a few questions for this post, as part of the series I am doing on law and wellness.

The interview is below the break.

Continue Reading Law & Wellness: Interview with Jodi D. Taylor (Shareholder at Baker Donelson)

The University of Richmond School of Law seeks to fill three tenure-track positions for the 2018-2019 academic year, including one in corporate/securities law.  Candidates should have outstanding academic credentials and show superb promise for top-notch scholarship and teaching.  The University of Richmond, an equal opportunity employer, is committed to developing a diverse workforce and student body and to supporting an inclusive campus community.  Applications from candidates who will contribute to these goals are strongly encouraged. 

Inquiries and requests for additional information may be directed to Professor Jessica Erickson, Chair of Faculty Appointments, at lawfacultyapp@richmond.edu. 

On July 15 of this year, The New York Times ran an article entitled, “The Lawyer, The Addict.” The article looks at the life of Peter, a partner of a prestigious Silicon Valley law firm, before he died of a drug overdose.

You should read the entire article, but I will provide a few quotes.

  • “He had been working more than 60 hours a week for 20 years, ever since he started law school and worked his way into a partnership in the intellectual property practice of Wilson Sonsini.”
  • “Peter worked so much that he rarely cooked anymore, sustaining himself largely on fast food, snacks, coffee, ibuprofen and antacids.”
  • “Peter, one of the most successful people I have ever known, died a drug addict, felled by a systemic bacterial infection common to intravenous users.”
  • “The history on his cellphone shows the last call he ever made was for work. Peter, vomiting, unable to sit up, slipping in and out of consciousness, had managed, somehow, to dial into a conference call.”
  • “The further I probed, the more apparent it became that drug abuse among America’s lawyers is on the rise and deeply hidden.”
  • “One of the most comprehensive studies of lawyers and substance abuse was released just seven months after Peter died. That 2016 report, from the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and the American Bar Association, analyzed the responses of 12,825 licensed, practicing attorneys across 19 states. Over all, the results showed that about 21 percent of lawyers qualify as problem drinkers, while 28 percent struggle with mild or more serious depression and 19 percent struggle with anxiety. Only 3,419 lawyers answered questions about drug use, and that itself is telling, said Patrick Krill, the study’s lead author and also a lawyer. “It’s left to speculation what motivated 75 percent of attorneys to skip over the section on drug use as if it wasn’t there.” In Mr. Krill’s opinion, they were afraid to answer. Of the lawyers that did answer those questions, 5.6 percent used cocaine, crack and stimulants; 5.6 percent used opioids; 10.2 percent used marijuana and hash; and nearly 16 percent used sedatives.”

There is much more in the article, including claims that the problems with mindset and addiction, for many, start in law school.

After reading this article, and many like it (and living through the suicide of a partner at one of my former firms), I decided to do a series of posts on Law & Wellness. These posts will not focus on mental health or addiction problems. Rather, these posts will focus on the positive side. For example, I plan a handful of interviews with lawyers and educators who manage to do well both inside and outside of the office, finding ways to work efficiently and prioritize properly. My co-editors may chime in from time to time with related posts of their own.

The Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Business Associations seeks to recognize Section members who demonstrate exemplary mentoring qualities.  We seek nomination letters on behalf of a deserving colleague (please no self-nominations) on or before November 1, 2017, sent to Professor Anne Tucker at amtucker@gsu.edu.

Nominations should address personal experience with the mentor, and any additional information illustrative of the nominee’s dedication to mentoring including qualities such as:

  • Is eager to discuss others’ early ideas and contributes to the development and improvement of others’ work;
  • Promotes and encourages the success of junior scholars by reading and providing meaningful and useful feedback on drafts;
  • Promotes a supportive and rigorous environment for conference presentations;
  • Speaks frankly, provides useful professional and personal advice when asked;
  • Actively participates in a network of scholars;
  • Facilitates professional opportunities for junior scholars such as providing introductions to others in the field, and encouraging participation in the scholarly community through writing and speaking; 
  • Mentors those from underrepresented communities in academics and the study of law;
  • Actively/willingly participates in the promotion process for others by advising on tenure process, writing review letters, and providing useful guidance on career advancement.

Who May Nominate: Any member of the Section on Business Associations. 

Who is Eligible to Be Nominated: Members of the Section on Business Associations and others are eligible for nomination.  Nominees should have 10 years or more of law teaching.

Recognition: The Executive Committee will recognize all nominees at the AALS 2018 Annual Meeting and distribute the list to Section members.

In 2015, the Section recognized the following outstanding mentors:

Egon Guttman, Lynne L. Dallas, Claire Moore Dickerson, Christopher Drahozal, William A (“Bill”) Klein, Donald C. Langevoort,  Juliet Moringiello, Marleen O’Connor, Charles (Chuck) O’Kelley, Terry O’Neill, Alysa Rollack, Roberta Romano & Gordon Smith

Business leaders probably didn’t think the honeymoon would be over so fast. A CEO as President, a deregulation czar, billionaires in the cabinet- what could possibly go wrong?

When Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck, resigned from one of the President’s business advisory councils because he didn’t believe that President Trump had responded appropriately to the tragic events in Charlottesville, I really didn’t think it would have much of an impact. I had originally planned to blog about How (Not) To Teach a Class on Startups, and I will next week (unless there is other breaking news). But yesterday, I decided to blog about Frazier, and to connect his actions to a talk I gave to UM law students at orientation last week about how CEOs talk about corporate responsibility but it doesn’t always make a difference. I started drafting this post questioning how many people would actually run to their doctors asking to switch their medications to or from Merck products because of Frazier’s stance on Charlottesville. Then I thought perhaps, Frazier’s stance would have a bigger impact on the millennial employees who will make up almost 50% of the employee base in the next few years. Maybe he would get a standing ovation at the next shareholder meeting. Maybe he would get some recognition other than an angry tweet from the President and lots of news coverage.

By yesterday afternoon, Under Armour’s CEO had also stepped down from the President’s business advisory council. That made my draft post a little more interesting. Would those customers care more or less about the CEO’s position? By this morning, still more CEOs chose to leave the council after President Trump’s lengthy and surprising press conference yesterday. By that time, the media and politicians of all stripes had excoriated the President. This afternoon, the President disbanded his two advisory councils after a call organized by the CEO of Blackstone with his peers to discuss whether to proceed. Although Trump “disbanded” the councils, they had already decided to dissolve earlier in the day.

I’m not teaching Business Associations this semester, but this is a teachable moment, and not just for Con Law professors. What are the corporate governance implications? Should the CEOs have stayed on these advisory councils so that they could advise this CEO President on much needed tax, health care, immigration, infrastructure, trade, investment, and other reform or do Trump’s personal and political views make that impossible? Many of the CEOs who originally stayed on the councils believed that they could do more for the country and their shareholders by working with the President. Did the CEOs who originally resigned do the right thing for their conscience but the wrong thing by their shareholders? Did those who stayed send the wrong message to their employees  in light of the Google diversity controversy? Did they think about the temperament of their board members or of the shareholder proposals that they had received in the past or that they were expecting when thinking about whether to stay or go? 

Many professors avoid politics in business classes, and that’s understandable because there are enough issues with coverage and these are sensitive issues. But if you do plan to address them, please comment below or send an email to mweldon@law.miami.edu.

From an e-mail I received earlier today: 

————

FACULTY POSITION IN BUSINESS AND LAW 

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania invites applications for a tenure-track position at any level (Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor) in its Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics.  Applicants must have a J.D., a J.S.D./S.J.D., a Ph.D. in law, or an equivalent law degree from an accredited institution. An additional graduate degree in a relevant field is desirable but not required. For applicants in a doctoral program, an expected degree completion date of no later than July 1, 2019 is acceptable.

Applicants must have a demonstrated research interest in an area of law relevant to the Wharton School’s business education and research missions. Examples of such fields include, without limitation, corporate law, employment and labor law, financial regulation, securities regulation, and global trade and investment law.

The Wharton School has one of the largest and most widely published business school faculties in the world, with ten academic departments and over twenty research centers. Legal scholars in its Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department publish their research in leading law reviews and journals in the United States and abroad. The Department’s faculty teach a variety of required and elective courses in law and business ethics in Wharton’s undergraduate, MBA, and EMBA divisions, as well as in its own Ph.D. program in Ethics and Legal Studies.

Applicants are requested to electronically submit a letter of introduction, c.v., and at least one selected article or writing sample in PDF format via the following website,https://lgst.wharton.upenn.edu/faculty/faculty-positions/ , by November 1, 2017.   Decisions for interviews will be made on a rolling basis, so candidates are encouraged to apply early. The appointment is expected to begin July 1, 2018.

 

The University of Pennsylvania is an equal opportunity employer.  Minorities, women, individuals with disabilities and veterans are encouraged to apply.

 

Earlier this week, Professor Bainbridge posted California court completely bollixes up business law nomenclature, discussing Keith Paul Bishop’s post on Curci Investments, LLC v. Baldwin, Cal. Ct. App. Case No. G052764 (Aug. 10, 2017).  The good professor, noting (with approval) what he calls my possibly “Ahabian” obsession with courts and their LLC references, says that “misusing terminology leads to misapplied doctrine.”  Darn right.

To illustrate his point, let’s discuss a 2016 Colorado case that manages to highlight how both Colorado and Utah have it wrong. As is so often the case, the decision turns on incorrectly merging doctrine from one entity type (the corporation) into another (the LLC) without acknowledging or explaining why that makes sense.  To the court’s credit, they got the choice of law right, applying the internal affairs doctrine to use Utah law for veil piercing a Utah LLC, even though the case was in a Colorado court. 

After correctly deciding to use Utah law, the court then went down a doctrinally weak path.  Here we go:

Marquis is a Utah LLC. (ECF No. 1 ¶ 7.) Utah courts apply traditional corporate veil-piercing principles to LLCs. See, e.g., Lodges at Bear Hollow Condo. Homeowners Ass’n, Inc. v. Bear Hollow Restoration, LLC, 344 P.3d 145, 150 (Utah Ct. App. 2015). The basic veil-piercing analysis requires two steps:
The first part of the test, often called the formalities requirement, requires the movant to show such unity of interest and ownership that the separate personalities of the corporation and the individual no longer exist. The second part of the test, often called the fairness requirement, requires the movant to show that observance of the corporate form would sanction a fraud, promote injustice, or condone an inequitable result.
Jones v. Marquis Properties, LLC, 212 F. Supp. 3d 1010, 1021 (D. Colo. 2016). 
 
First, say it with me: You Can’t Pierce the Corporate Veil of an LLC Because It Doesn’t Have One.  Second, the so-called “the formalities requirement” is a problem for Utah LLCs if one looks at the Utah LLC Act. The Colorado court does not do that, and neither does the Utah court that decided Bear Hollow Restoration, upon which Colorado relied.  They should have. You see, Utah has adopted the Revised Uniform Limited Liability Act, and the Utah version states expressly: 
The failure of a limited liability company to observe formalities relating to the exercise of its powers or management of its activities and affairs is not a ground for imposing liability on a member or manager of the limited liability company for a debt, obligation, or other liability of the limited liability company.
Utah Code Ann. § 48-3a-304(b). So, that is at least potentially a problem, because the Utah test for the formalities requirement is supposed to be determined by looking at seven factors:
(1) undercapitalization of a one-[person] corporation; (2) failure to observe corporate formalities; (3) nonpayment of dividends; (4) siphoning of corporate funds by the dominant stockholder; (5) nonfunctioning of other officers or directors; (6) absence of corporate records; [and] (7) the use of the corporation as a facade for operations of the dominant stockholder or stockholders….
Lodges at Bear Hollow Condo. Homeowners Ass’n, Inc. v. Bear Hollow Restoration, LLC, 344 P.3d 145, 150 (Utah App. 2015).
 
I know some will argue I am being overly formalistic in highlighting how corporate focused these factors are, but this is problematic.  Virtually all of these factors must, at a minimum, be contorted to apply to LLCs.  If the test is going to be applied, the least a court should do is to rewrite the test so it refers LLCs specifically.  Why? Well, primarily because in doing so, it would make clear just how silly these factors are when trying to do so.  (For example, LLCs don’t have stockholders, corporate funds, dividends, and generally don’t have an obligation to have officers or directors.) 

 The Marquis Properties court skips actually applying the test saying simply that an SEC investigation report was sufficient to allow veil piercing. The court determined that an SEC report establishes that sole member of the LLC used the entity “to create the illusion of profitable investments and thereby to enrich himself, with no ability or intent to honor” the LLC’s obligations. “Given this, strictly respecting [the LLC’s] corporate form [ed. note: UGH] would sanction [the member’s] fraud.”  The Court then found that veil-piercing was appropriate to hold the member “jointly and severally liable for the amounts owed by” the LLC to the plaintiffs.

But veil piercing is both neither appropriate nor necessary in this case.  In discussing the SEC report earlier in the case, the court found that “all elements of mail and wire fraud are present.” I see nothing that would absolve either the LLC as an entity of liability for the fraud and I see no reason why the member of the LLC would not be personally liable for the fraud he committed purportedly on behalf of the LLC and for his own benefit.  

This case illustrates another problem with veil piercing: both courts and lawyers are too willing to jump to veil piercing when simple fraud will do. This case illustrates clearly that fraud was evident, and fraud should be sufficient grounds for the plaintiffs to recover from the individual committing fraud. That means the entire veil piercing discussion should be treated as dicta. The entity form did not create this problem, and the entity form does not need to be disregarded, at least as far as I can tell, to allow plaintiffs to recover fully.  Before even considering veil piercing, a court should be able to state clearly why veil piercing is necessary to make the plaintiff whole. Otherwise, you end up with bad case law that can lead to bad doctrine, which leads to inefficient courts and markets.  

Oh, and while I’m at it, Westlaw needs to get their act together, too.  The Westlaw summary and headnotes say “limited liability corporation (LLC)” five times in connection with this case.  Come on, y’all.  

 

Former BLPB editor Steve Bradford has posted a new paper adding to his wonderful series of articles on crowdfunding (on which I and so many others rely in our crowdfunding work).  This article, entitled “Online Arbitration as a Remedy for Crowdfunding Fraud” (and forthcoming in the Florida State University Law Review), focuses on a hot topic in many areas of lawyering–online dispute resolution, or ODR.  Steve brings the discussion to bear on his crowdfunding work.  Specifically, he suggests online arbitration as an efficacious way of resolving allegations of fraud in crowdfunding.  Here’s the abstract:

It is now legal to see securities to the general public in unregistered, crowdfunded offerings. But offerings pursuant to the new federal crowdfunding exemption pose a serious risk of fraud. The buyers will be mostly small, unsophisticated investors, the issuers will be mostly small startups about whom little is known, and crowdfunded offerings lack some of the protections available in registered offerings. Some of the requirements of the exemption may reduce the incidence of fraud, but there will undoubtedly be fraudulent offerings.

An effective antifraud remedy is needed to compensate investors and help deter wrongdoers. But, because of the small dollar amounts involved, neither individual litigation nor class actions will usually be feasible; the cost of suing will usually exceed the expected recovery. Federal and state securities regulators are also unlikely to focus their limited enforcement resources on small crowdfunding offerings. A more effective remedy is needed.

Arbitration is cheaper, but even ordinary arbitration will often be too expensive for the small amounts invested in crowdfunding. In this article, I attempt to design a simplified, cost-effective arbitration remedy to deal with crowdfunding fraud. The arbitration remedy should be unilateral; crowdfunding issuers should be obligated to arbitrate, but not investors. Crowdfunding arbitration should be online, with the parties limited to written submissions. But it should be public, and arbitrators should be required to publish their findings. The arbitrators should be experts on both crowdfunding and securities law, and they should take an active, inquisitorial role in developing the evidence. Finally, all of the investors in an offering should be able to consolidate their claims into an arbitration class action.

Although I haven’t yet read the paper (which was just posted this morning, it seems), Steve’s idea totally makes sense to me on so many levels.  Among other things, ODR has a history in e-commerce and social media, two front-runners and foundations of crowdfunding.  Also, the dispute resolution expense issue that Steve alludes to in the abstract is real.  It has been raised by a number of us, including by me in this draft paper, in which I assert, among other things:

Prosecutors and regulators may not be willing or able to devote financial and human resources to enforcement efforts absent statutory or regulatory incentives or extraordinary policy reasons for doing so . . . . Individual funders also are unlikely to bring private actions or even engage alternative dispute resolution since the cost of vindicating their rights easily could exceed their invested money and time, although the availability of treble damages (often a statutory right for willful violations of consumer protection statutes) or other extraordinary remedies may change the calculus somewhat.

 . . . [C]lass actions tend to be procedurally complex—difficult to get in front of a court—and may not be available in some jurisdictions. Moreover, the prospects for recovery are unknown and, based on recent information from U.S. securities class action litigation, financial compensation to individual members of the plaintiff class is likely to be relatively insignificant in dollar value and in relationship to losses suffered, even if the aggregate amount of damages paid by the defendant is relatively high . . . . Accordingly, class action litigation also may be of limited utility in bringing successful legal claims in the crowdfunding context.

This will be an area for much further thought as the crowdfunding adventure continues . . . .