Citing to Hobby Lobby, a U.S. District Court Judge in Utah ruled that an individual may refuse to comply with a federal subpoena in a child labor investigation because naming church leaders would violate his religious freedoms protected under RFRA.   The court found that complying with the subpoena failed the least restrictive means prong under RFRA.  The full court opinion, Perez v. Paragon Contractors, Corp., 2:13CV00281-DS, 2014 WL 4628572 (D. Utah Sept. 11, 2014),  is available here and a a brief news summary is available here.

 
-Anne Tucker
 
 
 

(Note:  This is a cross-posted multiple part series from WVU Law Prof. Josh Fershee from the Business Law Prof Blog and Prof. Elaine Waterhouse Wilson from the Nonprofit Law Prof Blog, who combined forces to evaluate benefit corporations from both the nonprofit and the for-profit sides.  The previous installments can be found here and here (NLPB) and here and here (BLPB).)

In prior posts we talked about what a benefit corporation is and is not.  In this post, we’ll cover whether the benefit corporation is really necessary at all. 

Under the Delaware General Corporation Code § 101(b), “[a] corporation may be incorporated or organized under this chapter to conduct or promote any lawful business or purposes . . . .” Certainly there is nothing there that indicates a company must maximize profits or take risks or “monetize” anything. (Delaware law warrants inclusion in any discussion of corporate law because the state’s law is so influential, even where it is not binding.) 

Back in 2010, Josh Fershee wrote a post questioning the need for such legislation shortly after Maryland passed the first benefit corporation legislation:

I am not sure what think about this benefit corporation legislation.  I can understand how expressly stating such public benefits goals might have value and provide both guidance and cover for a board of directors.  However, I am skeptical it was necessary. 

Not to overstate its binding effects today, but we learned from Dodge v. Ford that if you have a traditional corporation, formed under a traditional certificate of incorporation and bylaws, you are restricted in your ability to “share the wealth” with the general public for purposes of “philanthropic and altruistic” goals.  But that doesn’t mean current law doesn’t permit such actions in any situation, does it? 

The idea that a corporation could choose to adopt any of a wide range of corporate philosophies is supported by multiple concepts, such as director primacy in carrying out shareholder wealth maximization, the business judgment rule, and the mandate that directors be the ones to lead the entity.  Is it not reasonable for a group of directors to determine that the best way to create a long-term and profitable business is to build customer loyalty to the company via reasonable prices, high wages to employees, generous giving to charity, and thoughtful environmental stewardship?  Suppose that directors even stated in their certificate that the board of directors, in carrying out their duties, must consider the corporate purpose as part of exercising their business judgment. 

Please click below to read more.

Continue Reading March of the Benefit Corporation: So Why Bother? Isn’t the Business Judgment Rule Alive and Well? (Part III)

Omnicare is back in court.  This time, it is petitioning the Supreme Court for relief in a legal battle under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.  The question presented (as quoted from the cert petition) is:

For purposes of a Section 11 claim, may a plaintiff plead that a statement of opinion was “untrue” merely by alleging that the opinion itself was objectively wrong, as the Sixth Circuit has concluded, or must the plaintiff also allege that the statement was subjectively false—requiring allegations that the speaker’s actual opinion was different from the one expressed—as the Second, Third, and Ninth Circuits have held?

If this case sounds familiar to you, that may be because co-blogger Ann Lipton already has written about the case here on the BLPB.  As it turns out, Ann and I each have signed onto amicus briefs in the case supporting the same side–the respondents.  The brief that Ann is on can be found here.  The question addressed in that brief is “[w]hether an objectively incorrect statement of opinion is actionable under Section 11 . . . only if it was subjectively disbelieved by the defendant.”  Jay Brown‘s brief, of which I am a named co-author (together with Lyman Johnson and Celia Taylor), is here.  We address “[w]hether, for purposes of issuer liability under Section 11 . . . a statement in a registration statement attempting to characterize a verifiable, present fact about the legal validity of contracts as a ‘belief’ rather than a fact can shield an issuer from liability.”

Continue Reading Section 11 Actions Based on Statements of Belief

In July, I blogged about the irrelevance of law reviews. Here’s more evidence.

I spoke at a symposium on crowdfunding in late March and submitted my article, Shooting the Messenger: The Liability of Crowdfunding Intermediaries for the Fraud of Others, to the law review in late June. The editor-in-chief recently informed me that the edited article would be available for my review sometime in November, and that it should be published in March of 2015.

In the meantime, the article is accumulating downloads on SSRN, the Social Science Research Network. By the time it’s published, most of the people who are most interested in the topic will have already read it. The law review will provide a published archive that people can cite to, but that’s about it.

Like many people I know, I am a huge fan of Frank Pasquale.  Thus, I was very excited to read his Balkanization interview (available here) discussing his forthcoming book, “The Black Box Society.”  The interview touches on a wide range of topics, so you should go read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt to tempt you in case you’re on the fence:

I think our academic culture is very good at analysis, but oft-adrift when it comes to synthesis. Specialization obscures the big picture. And law can succumb to this as easily [as] any other field. For example, in the case of internet companies, cyberlawyers too often confine themselves to saying: “Google and Facebook should win key copyright cases, and subsequent trademark cases, and antitrust cases, and get certain First Amendment immunities, and not be classified as a ‘consumer reporting agency’ under relevant privacy laws,” etc. They may well be correct in every particular case. But what happens when a critical mass of close cases combines with network effects to give a few firms incredible power over our information about (and even interpretation of) events?

 

Similarly, old banking laws may fit poorly with the new globalized financial landscape. Finance lawyers churn out position papers dismantling the logic of Dodd-Frank, Basel, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. But if too-big-to-fail firms keep growing bigger, assured of state support, while everything else the government does is deemed contingent: what kind of social contract is that?

 

The lawyers of the Progressive Era and the New Deal dealt with similar challenges: massive firms that warped the fabric of economic, political, and even cultural life to their own advantage. They consulted the best of social science to recommend regulation—but they didn’t let some narrow field (like neoclassical economics) act as a straitjacket (as, say, antitrust lawyers of today are all too prone to do).

But that’s what happened when hedge fund Starboard Value delivered a 294-slide presentation on the terrible food at Olive Garden as part of its fight for control of Darden Restaurants. (You can see the presentation in all of its glory here.)

The presentation not only received news coverage in standard outlets like WSJ and Bloomberg, but even attracted the attention of Slate and Mother Jones, who were amused by such detailed accusations as “Darden stopped salting the water in which it boils pasta,” that the crispy Parmesan asparagus is “anything but,” and Starboard’s lament that Olive Garden wait staff bring multiple breadsticks to the table at once, instead of delivering one per customer with a right of replenishment – which leads, according to Starboard, to cold breadsticks that “deteriorate in quality,” and encourages customers to fill up on the free stuff instead of ordering more things that cost money.

Starboard also complained that the Olive Garden menu has expanded to non-Italian offerings like tapas and burgers, that Olive Garden overstuffs its salads and lards them with too much dressing, and that the wait staff fail to push alcohol sales.

All of this, of course, led to such glorious headlines as “Olive Garden Defends Breadstick Policy,”  and a Business Insider review of Olive Garden restaurants (the verdict: Starboard was right; but for a contrary opinion, see the New Yorker’s take).

The real debate, though, isn’t about food – it’s about the value of the real estate on which Darden’s restaurants sit – which didn’t really make it into most of the headlines.

That said, in a fairly ironic bit of timing, just days after the presentation, CalPERS announced that it was dumping all of its hedge fund investments, because they just aren’t delivering enough of a bang for the buck. CalPERS’s announcement, though, didn’t get quite the same news coverage – maybe it should have used power points.

I am passing on the English translation of a call for book chapters issued by a friend and colleague in Dijon, France.  The book is international and has a broad business management focus.

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As the editor of a forthcoming book, it is my greatest pleasure to invite you to submit articles as chapters. The tentative title is: Strategic Managerial Approaches to Crowdfunding Online. The book will be published by IGI Global publishers in the USA, within the series “Advances in Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage (ABSCA).”

Please read carefully the following guidelines for submission:

The context

The emerging crowdfunding phenomenon is a collective effort by individuals who network and pool their money together, usually via the internet and without any specific conventional financial intermediation, in order to invest in and support for-profit, artistic, and cultural ventures initiative undertaken by other people or organizations. The spontaneous interactions and transactions between individuals allow relatively considerable fund raisings by drawing on small contributions from a relatively large number of individuals using the Internet, without standard financial intermediaries.

The advent of crowdfunding coincides with the democratization of information technologies that enable people to contact, interact, collaborate and exchange at lowest costs, if not for free. In fact, information technologies have allowed the drastic reduction of transaction costs and by the same the revival of ancient forms of transactions such as auctions, barter, tenders, recycling, and direct transactions between individuals.

Many platforms encourage crowdfunding such as Kiva, Babyloan, MyC4 in lending to the poor entrepreneurs, Prosper, Kapipal and Zopa in P2P social lending, Kickstarter, MyMajorCompany in entrepreneurial projects, SellaBand in music, etc.

Continue Reading Call for Crowdfunding Book Chapter Proposals

Call for Papers

ITEM 6 – Tunis, Tunisia

Microfinance: Coaching, Counting, and Crowding

The Banque Populaire Chair in Microfinance of the Burgundy School of Business (France) and l’École supérieure du commerce de Tunis jointly organize the 6th edition of the annual conference “Institutional and Technological Environment of Microfinance” (ITEM) in March 2015 (17, 18, 19) in Tunis, Tunisia.

The 6th edition brings together–but not limited to-three major issues, which are shaping the sector of microfinance: Coaching, Counting, and Crowding.

Coaching in microfinance provides training in business and soft skills (attributes enhancing an individual’s interactions and self-performance) that the poor micro-entrepreneurs rarely have. Increasingly, microfinance academics and practitioners consider building the human capital of micro-entrepreneurs a critical ingredient of moving out of poverty.

Counting and tracking the microfinance clients and prospects with the information technologies not only lessen information asymmetry, but also lower the transaction cost of financial intermediation. Corollary: information technologies can open ways for offering financial services to the poor as a normal way of doing and extending normal business, and accelerate their social integration. 

Crowding, based on the Web 2.0 technologies, enables direct interactions between millions of lending and borrowing people. Through crowdfunding, micro and small entrepreneurs can raise the crucial funds required for their projects by a large number of individuals via social networks on the Internet. It provides an unprecedented opportunity for alleviating poverty in both developed and developing countries.

In addition to the above topics, other microfinance related topics such as impact measures, social governance, innovation, and sustainable development are welcomed.

The ITEM conference provides a forum for both researchers and practitioners to discuss and exchange on financial inclusion. The conference in March 2015 seeks quantitative, qualitative and experience-based papers from industry and academia. Case studies and PhD research-in-progress are also welcomed. It encourages reflections on the potential and use of technology in microfinance in developed and developing countries.

Publication opportunity

Papers presented at the conference will also be considered for publication in partnering journals.

Submission procedure

Proposals: All contribution types require a proposal in the first instance, including a short abstract between 300 and 500 words, up to five keywords, the full names (first name and surname, not initials), email addresses of all authors, and a postal address and telephone number for at least one contact author.

Submission period for the proposals: Up to November 10, 2014.

Acceptance of proposals: By November 30, 2014. As abstract selection notifications will be sent out to relevant authors, please indicate clearly if the contact author is not the lead author.

Full paper: Only required after acceptance of abstract. Papers should not to be more than 5000 words including abstract, keywords and references.

Submission period for the full papers: Up to February 16, 2015.

Contacts:

  • ITEM6@escdijon.eu
  • Djamchid ASSADI: Djamchid.Assadi@escdijon.eu
  • Maaouia BEN NASR: Maouia.Ben-Nasr@escdijon.eu

Web site: http://item6.weebly.com

Fees: Author registration and payment must be completed by February 27, 2015.

There are special discounts available for early-bird registration, students and group bookings (3 registrations). Details will be available on the ITEM 6 website.

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[Ed. Note:  I participated in ITEM 5 last year.  The conference was very worthwhile and attracted a diverse group of scholars and others (in industry) from a number of countries (not the usual suspects, in many cases).  We took a field trip to a local microfinance lender on the first day of the conference (as part of the event), which was incredibly enlightening.  I am looking at funding opportunities to enable me to attend the 2015 conference as well.]

We are less than a month away from the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference (a/k/a the “meat market” or the “FRC”). Reading the comments at PrawfsBlawg from the nervous candidates brings me back to my time on the meat market in 2010.

In this post, I hope to encourage hiring committees to engage in some perspective taking and improve the typical law school hiring process for candidates.

Instead of focusing on schools that I felt needed improvement in their hiring processes, I want to highlight one hiring committee that I think got it exactly right. The hiring committee was from The University of Oklahoma College of Law, made up of Emily Hammond (now at George Washington), Katheleen Guzman, and Joseph Thai.

Four years later, I remember their names vividly. I only made it to the FRC interview level with Oklahoma, and never got a call-back with the school, which makes their conduct that much more admirable. Oklahoma’s hiring committee excelled in three areas that I think all hiring committees should focus on and that I discuss more fully after the break: communication, transparency, and humanity.

Continue Reading Some Thoughts on Hiring Committees

Teaching the definition of a “security” to business associations students who: 1) want to be litigators; 2) are afraid of math, finance, and accounting; 3) don’t know anything about business; 4) only take the class because it’s required; and 5) aren’t allowed to distract themselves with electronics in class is no small feat.

Thankfully, as we were discussing the definition and exemptions, we also touched on IPOs. Many of the students knew nothing about IPOs but were already Alibaba customers and going through some of the registration statement made them understand the many reasons companies want to avoid going public. Of course, now that we went through some of the risk factors, my students who seemed gung ho about the IPO after watching some videos about the hype were a little less excited about it (good thing because they probably couldn’t buy anyway).  

Now if I can only figure out how to jazz up the corporate finance chapter next week.