In a detailed May 4, 2015 opinion (here), Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of the Delaware Chancery Court extensively reviewed the rights of an insolvent company’s creditors to pursue derivative claims against the company’s directors. As Francis Pileggi put it in a May 6, 2015 post on his Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation blog
Director and officer liability
Bank Directors Facing Increased Regulatory Scrutiny, Raising Fears of Potential New Liability Exposures
Federal banking regulators have stepped up their interactions with and scrutiny of bank directors, according a recent Wall Street Journal article. The March 31, 2015 article, entitled “Regulators Intensify Scrutiny of Bank Boards” (here) details the ways in which regulators are “zeroing in on Wall Street boardrooms as part of the government’s intensified…
An Alarming Liability Award Against Not-for-Profit Organization’s Directors and Officers
A question that frequently recurs when I am speaking to directors and officers of non-profit organizations is why – given that their firms have no shareholders – they need to bother with D&O insurance. The reality is that even though officials at non-profit firms don’t have to worry about the possibility of shareholder claims, non-profit…
Personal Liability for Corporate Officials Under U.S. Import Laws
Import laws and custom duties are not areas of the law into which I frequently (or lightly) venture, but I delve into these topics here and now because developments in these areas have served up yet another example where individual corporate officers have been held liable personally for matters that previously had been regarded exclusively …
While You Were Out
On the Frontiers of Corporate Litigation and Liability: Inversion Transactions and a Proposed Duty to Warn
Among the developments dominating the business headlines in recent weeks have been two unrelated stories – the rising wave of so-called “inversion” transactions in which U.S. companies acquire foreign firms to avoid U.S. tax laws and the revelation of previously undisclosed problems with the ignition switches in certain GM cars that allegedly resulted in numerous …
Georgia Supreme Court Affirms, Elucidates Business Judgment Rule – and Its Limitations
A recurring issue in FDIC litigation against the former directors and officers of failed banks has been whether the business judgment rule insulates the defendants from claims of ordinary negligence. This question has been particularly important in Georgia, where there were more bank failures than any in other state and consequently more failed bank litigation. …
SEC Commissioner Aguilar Addresses Cybersecurity Oversight Responsibilities of Corporate Boards
In a June 10, 2014 speech entitled “Boards of Directors, Corporate Governance and Cyber-Risks: Sharpening the Focus” delivered at the New York Stock Exchange, SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar highlighted the critical importance of the involvement of boards of directors in cybersecurity oversight. In his speech, Aguilar stressed that “ensuring the adequacy of a company’s …
Guest Post: Cyber Security, Cyber Governance, and Cyber Insurance: What Every Public Company Director Needs to Know
As I have frequently noted on this site (refer, for example, here), cyber security issues increasingly are a board level concern, and indeed, recent shareholder litigation has shown that investors intend to hold board members accountable when data breaches cause problems for their companies. In the following guest article, which was previously published…
Environmental Liability and D&O Exposure
Duke Energy, the largest provider of electricity in the United States, faces a number of challenges as it struggles to deal with the consequences of the February 2, 2014 coal ash spill at its Dan River Steam Station in Eden, North Carolina. In addition to the environmental remediation issues facing the company, two of its …