Business
Associations Class Notes
I
think we’re wrapping up corporations today!
A
few final remarks on 10b-5: when a close corporation comes under Crosby v. Beam, you need not rely on
federal law. He believes that fraud is
not required because the fiduciary duties are so intense. The absence of fraud is important because in
the last 25 years, the federal courts have required extremely heightened
pleading for fraud. Also, the 1995 Act
reinforces the requirement as to fraud class actions concerning
securities. If you can plead something
lesser than fraud, do it, because it’s much easier to make out a case. In addition, if the defendant has insurance,
remember that negligence and gross negligence will be covered by the policy,
while hardcore fraud will not be covered.
More on duty of care
We’re
leading up to a defense both to duty of care and duty of loyalty actions: the defense
of special litigation committees, composed of truly independent outside
directors studying the matter and concluding that it ought to be stopped. We also look at the defense on the merits of
the shareholder decision not to sue.
That will work under either duty of care or duty of loyalty. It requires that you can get disinterested shareholders
holding a majority of the stock to vote with you after full and fair disclosure
up-front. You also must show that
creditors are not harmed. This is the non-unanimous shareholder ratification rule. There is also a unanimous shareholder ratification rule.
Let’s
say three siblings each hold 10% of the stock of a Sub C company. The father owns the remaining 70%. The three siblings are the directors and
officers and they set their own pay. In
the absence of a defense, if the father starts an action under Crosby v. Beam or under Rule 23.1, the
sibling’s only defense to the reasonableness of their compensation is overall reasonableness. That is always
possible. If the defendants can show
overall reasonableness, both in disclosure and on the merits,
and creditors aren’t harmed, then they have a defense. Note that this is a defense on the merits. A little company like this would not have
outside directors who could set up a litigation committee. What would we advice the siblings? We would advise them to hold a joint shareholders’
and directors’ meeting and get all four people to vote “yes” for salaries. As long as there is full and fair disclosure
up-front and no creditors are harmed, this is an absolute defense.
Here
is another defense lawyer’s trick. Defense
lawyers have tried to bifurcate or trifurcate the trial. If you can convince the judge to do that
up-front, then in the preceding example the defense can be asserted early. If the defendants win, they are home free
because it’s a total defense. This has recently been used in the 1990’s Supreme
Court Exxon case. The case came out of
Exxon
sued the dry-dock company in negligence and in contract. The attorney for the dry-dock company
convinced the judge to bifurcate, saying: “There is an overriding legal
principle that if ordinary negligence
by the defendant is followed by gross negligence
on the part of the plaintiff, then there is no legal cause, and thus the dry-dock company has a 100% defense.” The judge granted the motion and found that
what the Exxon captain did was gross negligence,
and under respondeat superior, Exxon is bound by the captain’s actions. He agreed with the defendant’s legal
principle in negligence and he also said the same reasoning applied to the warranty
count on the express written contract.
Even if there is a warranty, the judge said, if the plaintiff reacts
with gross negligence then the company has a 100% defense.
The
U.S. Supreme Court held that the trial court judge was totally correct on the
merits. What the defense lawyers did
here is get to the “nub” of the matter quickly.
Within each “half” of the case, they can use 12(b)(6)
and summary judgment. The court did not
have to hear testimony about damages.
They simply looked at one part of it.
In
the example above, what is done by the three siblings will not bind the Internal
Revenue Service because it’s a Sub C company.
If the Internal Revenue Service comes calling,
you will have to persuade them. However,
the brothers are very much protected. One
of the requirements is that creditors are not hurt. What if the brothers are paid out much more
than they’re worth?
Marciano v. Nakash
In
The
Delaware Supreme Court, very consistent to their earlier case, says that the defense
of overall reasonableness both in
disclosure and on the merits with no harm to creditors is always available to a defendant in a duty of loyalty action. Here, the chancellor examined the loan
carefully and found that the loan was reasonable overall. There was no fraud or bad faith. The court-made exception for overall
reasonableness that preceded the statute is not
touched by the statute.
Heller v. Boylan
This
case references the famous case of Rogers
v. Hill from the U.S. Supreme Court of the 1920’s. George Washington Hill was the president of American
Tobacco Company in
In
the Delaware Supreme Court in the past three years, there was a case involving
Walt Disney. Michael Eisner hired an
assistant weirder than him. They didn’t get
along well, and he decided to terminate the assistant. They came up with a termination package and
it was put before the board for approval.
Most of the board consisted of independent, outside directors. Before trial, the Delaware Supreme Court
determined whether the pleadings were good enough. They said that waste is alleged. The case was sent back. There was also a case involving The Limited
recently in the same court. The Limited
is a big NYSE company, and there are a lot of social friends of Les Wexner on the board.
He entered into a conflict of interest transaction with The Limited, and
the independent directors blessed the transaction. The chancellor examined the exact relationship
of each of the alleged outside directors and found, contrary to first
appearance, they had very significant
business dealings with Wexner. The case was remanded for trial, and The
Limited later settled the case.
Sinclair Oil
Corp. v. Levien
Sinclair
USA is a big oil company. It owned about
93% of Sinclair Venezuela. The latter
was, itself, a public company with several hundred shareholders. The directors and officers of Sinclair
Venezuela were all directors, officers, or employees of Sinclair USA. Sinclair USA needed money. The directors of Sinclair Venezuela declared
very good dividends over a number of years so that the parent corporation could
replenish its bank account. Here we have
a “man bites dog” lawsuit! It’s not a
suit to force declaration of dividends, but rather a suit by the minority shareholders
that the payment of these dividends hurt Sinclair Venezuela because they had business
opportunities that they could have taken advantage of if not for the dividend
policy. The threshold question was
whether the case should be judged under conflict of interest analysis. If you do, Sinclair USA must prove overall
reasonableness. On the other hand, is
the case to be judged under the business judgment rule where the plaintiff, in
order to stay in court, would have to show fraud, ultra vires, illegality,
arbitrary action, or gross negligence to “shred the shield”.
The
court pointed out that the dividends did not violate any bank loan agreement or
the
Weinberger v. UOP, Inc.
Both
of these companies are NYSE public companies.
The parent owned 51% of the stock of the subsidiary from an earlier
friendly cash tender offer. The parent
has extra money to invest and it’s looking for something to invest in. The financial and operating folks figure that
if they can get the other 49% of the subsidiary at the same price per share
they paid for the first 51% then it would be a great investment. At the time of the friendly tender offer, the
board of directors of the subsidiary contained a majority of independent outside
directors. But at the time of the
controversy, only three out of the seven board members were independent. The parent wanted a cash-out merger, meaning
that the subsidiary would be merger into the parent for cash and the parent
would pay cash only. This invoked the proxy
rules at the subsidiary level since the subsidiary was an NYSE company. The Securities Act of 1933 was not applicable
to the transaction because cash is not a security either for federal,
Was
Rule 13e-3 applicable to the situation? This
is the “going private” rule. It applies
only to SEC-reporting companies. It was
not in effect at the time, but let us describe the
effect it would have had. The thrust of the rule is that if you have a
public company with public shareholders having equity securities and through
one or more transactions with an affiliate those public shareholders who did have equity securities end up with no equity securities then the rule applies. Note that if the rule had been in effect at
the time, it would have applied. The
rule says that, in addition to all other disclosure, the board of directors, in
the proxy statement, must expressly state whether, in their opinion, the
transaction is fair to minority shareholders.
The board of directors must give detailed reasons for their
conclusion. The Rule goes on to say that
the directors cannot delegate this task to an investment banker, though they
will hire an investment banker to help them.
This is a high burden because the Rule goes on to state that
projections, forward-looking information, appraisals, and “soft” data must be
consulted. You must go way beyond GAAP!
The
parent’s financial department had worked up tables indicating that the stock of
the subsidiary would be worth about $22 or $23.
They wanted to pay $19 which is what they paid before. The parent went through the books and records
of the subsidiary without the consent of the board of directors of the subsidiary. They did their due diligence without the
consent of the board. The information of
the subsidiary belongs to the subsidiary, not the parent! They also did not set up an independent
negotiating committee. They had three
outside directors. The court says that
they should have appointed an independent negotiating committee who would
acquire independent counsel, investment bankers and CPAs and that if they had
done all that, the business judgment rule would have saved the parent. There was no approval by a disinterested majority
of shareholders, because a majority of shareholders were interested!
Self-dealing
is a serious conflict of interest. You can revert to the more hospitable business
judgment rule if you set up an independent negotiating committee at the
subsidiary, but in this case the parent did not. There is no other defense available. Therefore, the parent has the burden of
pleading and proving overall reasonableness.
Overall reasonableness includes reasonableness on the merits as well as
reasonableness of disclosure. The parent’s
records showed that they believed the stock was worth $22-23. That was never disclosed to anyone at the
subsidiary. The defense was not made
out, and thus the case was remanded to determine damages. If you proceed under duty of loyalty,
causation-in-fact can often go by the wayside.
You also do not need to show fraud or bad faith if the plaintiff shows a
serious conflict of interest. In that
case, it is up to the defendant to
make out one of the four or five applicable defenses. If the defendant fails to make those out, the
defendant is going to be a big loser.
What’s
the fallout? Rule 13e-3 would be
applicable today. The federal disclosure
requirements don’t add a lot to the
Consider
a Washington Supreme Court case from the 1950’s, Matteson v. Zielbarth. A small startup corporation was about 63%
owned by one person who worked there full-time.
The other guy owned slightly more than one-third, enough to block a
merger. Business was rough, and the
company was about to go under. The
fellow running the company did some shopping around and found Z, Inc., which
thinks they have a pretty good business.
If the minority shareholder will agree to certain terms, Z, Inc. will
swoop in and take over the business, continuing to employ the fellow running
the company.
It
is stipulated that the fellow running the company was honest and that the
salary he was receiving was reasonable.
The salary being offered by Z is also stipulated to be reasonable. The minority shareholder decided to be
difficult. The shareholder decided that
he wanted a portion of the money the main guy gets or else he would use his
power to block the deal. The guy running
the company, with the consent of Z, Inc., set up a new company, N, Inc., and merged
the old company into the new company with him getting stock and with the minority
shareholder being cashed out. There was
no fraud; everything was done on the up and up.
There was a strong business purpose.
Shipman believes that the deal was reasonable. The court says that where the person being
frozen out has an appraisal remedy, if he waits until after the merger to sue,
then he has no damage remedy (as long as there is no fraud).
There
are three
They
still wanted a team! They went to the
NHL and Nationwide Insurance. The head
of Nationwide indicated that they would consider building the arena and leasing
it to the team, which is what ultimately occurred. Hunt wasn’t thrilled with this change, and
decided to block the transaction.
McConnell and Wolff formed a new limited partnership and went
ahead. Hunt sued on corporate opportunity and freeze-out. In the LLC agreement, a very important clause
said that any one of the members could compete
with the LLC. That is often included in
real estate LLCs because real estate folks often have
side ventures. The Court of Appeals in
When
is the appraisal remedy a shareholder’s sole remedy? The Ohio Supreme Court decided two cases on
this issue on the same day in the early 1990’s.
The cases mean different things to different people. One was Stepak v. Schey and the other was State v. Maraschari. Here is Shipman’s interpretation: when one minority
shareholder sues in advance to block a deal, the fact that he would have an
appraisal remedy at the end does not toss
him out of court. If you sue to enjoin,
you may have to post a big bond. When you sue afterwards and there is no fraud or major disclosure discrepancy,
the cases suggest that in the absence of ultra vires, you can’t get damages, rather, you must elect the appraisal remedy.
Corporate opportunity
This
grew tremendously in the 20th century. In 1910, you had to prove an
expectancy in the corporation in order to prove corporate opportunity. That changed in the 1930’s with one of the
most famous cases ever decided: Guth v. Loft, out
of the Delaware Supreme Court, which involved Pepsi. The decision was very pro-plaintiff.
Another
case was Irving Trust Company v. Duetsch, which was from the Second Circuit in the 1920’s. There was a struggling company. The DeForrest
patents come on the market. The
controlling person doesn’t have enough money to buy them from the holder. But the controlling person thinks that he can
rake up the cash in a couple of months.
He wants to tie up the patents, so he has the company sign a contract to
buy the patents with the closing several months in the future. If he couldn’t raise the money, he figured it
would be the company on the line and not him.
But his goal was to raise the money.
He worked hard and succeeded. He
caused the company to assign the contract to him. He closed on the contract and made a lot of
money.
The
company went bankrupt, and the trustee in bankruptcy is the universal successor
to everything the company had, including causes of action against
affiliates. So the trustee in bankruptcy
sues. It’s a close case because the law
says that a wealthy director, officer, or controlling person does not have lend money to the company when it wants to take an
opportunity. In this case, the court
held that as a prophylactic principal that where the company has obligated
itself by signing a contract, the controlling person cannot use the defense
that the company didn’t have the money.
If the controlling person takes over the contract and it’s good, then
the company or the trustee in bankruptcy will sue in constructive trust, damages,
and accounting.
The
case of Miller out of the Minnesota Supreme
Court from the 1960’s does a good job summarizing the law of corporate
opportunity from the first half of the 20th century. The early cases aren’t fully consistent. The court’s reaction is to say that when it
comes right down to it, the test is really just whether what the officer or
controlling person did was reasonable.
In the 1970’s, the ALI stepped into the fray. They come up with a Restatement which says
that if the controlling person or officer or directors does not disclosure what
he is going to do at the outset to the other directors, officers and shareholders,
then he has per se violated his fiduciary duty and the corporation can sue him.
Northeast Harbor
Golf Club, Inc. v. Harris
This
case follows the Restatement.