Tag: directors’ fiduciary duties

Corporate GovernanceCorporate lawLitigation

McDonald’s court dismisses Caremark claims against directors

Here we have another in a string of McDonald’s cases—all of them arising out of workplace misconduct at McDonald’s, none even dipping its toe into employment law.  First, you’ll remember, there were settled charges brought by the SEC against McDonald’s and its former CEO, Stephen Easterbrook, arising out of disclosure about the termination of Easterbrook on account of workplace misconduct.  Then there was the derivative Caremark litigation for breach of fiduciary duty against David Fairhurst, who formerly served as Executive Vice President and Global Chief People Officer of McDonald’s, for consciously ignoring red flags about workplace misconduct and engaging in some pretty extensive workplace misconduct himself.  Now, we have a new decision out of Delaware regarding the derivative Caremark litigation against the company’s directors alleging that they ignored red flags about the company’s culture that condoned workplace misconduct.  But this case turned out to be different—VC Laster of the Delaware Chancery Court dismissed the complaint against the directors.  The Court held that, in this case, the directors did not ignore the numerous red flags: the facts cited in the pleadings did “not support a reasonably conceivable claim against them for breach of the duty of oversight.”  Once again, the case reinforces that high bar described by former Chief Justice Leo Strine for Caremark claims:  “Caremark claims are difficult to plead and ultimately to prove out,” and constitute “possibly the most difficult theory in corporation law upon which a plaintiff might hope to win a judgment.” (See this PubCo post.)

/ March 20, 2023
Corporate GovernanceCorporate lawLitigation

Fiduciary duty claims against SPAC sponsor survive dismissal in Delaware under entire fairness standard

Is everything securities fraud, as Bloomberg’s Matt Levine frequently maintains? (See this PubCo post.) Or perhaps, in the SPAC environment, will all claims of fraudulent misrepresentation and omission now become claims of breach of fiduciary duty under Delaware law—and reviewed under the entire fairness standard? Is that a possible takeaway from the Delaware Chancery Court’s refusal last week to dismiss the complaint in In Re Multiplan Corp. Stockholders Litigation? In that case, the plaintiffs, purchasers of securities in a SPAC IPO, claimed that the defendant SPAC sponsor and SPAC board members disloyally impaired the plaintiffs’ rights to redeem their SPAC shares prior to consummation of the de-SPAC transaction by breaching their fiduciary duty to disclose to the plaintiffs material information about the de-SPAC target company. According to the Court, the “Delaware courts have not previously had an opportunity to consider the application of our law in the SPAC context. In this decision, well-worn fiduciary principles are applied to the plaintiffs’ claims despite the novel issues presented. Doing so leads to several conclusions.” In particular, one of those conclusions was that, due to inherent conflicts between the SPAC’s fiduciaries and the public stockholders, the entire fairness standard of review applied, establishing a very high bar for dismissal of the complaint. 

/ January 10, 2022
Corporate GovernanceLitigation

Another Caremark case survives a challenge

In In re The Boeing Company Derivative Litigation, Vice Chancellor Morgan Zurn of the Delaware Court of Chancery opened her opinion this way:
“A 737 MAX airplane manufactured by The Boeing Company…crashed in October 2018, killing everyone onboard; a second one crashed in March 2019, to the same result. Those tragedies have led to numerous investigations and proceedings in multiple regulatory and judicial arenas to find out what went wrong and who is responsible. Those investigations have revealed that the 737 MAX tended to pitch up due to its engine placement; that a new software program designed to adjust the plane downward depended on a single faulty sensor and therefore activated too readily; and that the software program was insufficiently explained to pilots and regulators. In both crashes, the software directed the plane down. The primary victims of the crashes are, of course, the deceased, their families, and their loved ones. While it may seem callous in the face of their losses, corporate law recognizes another set of victims: Boeing as an enterprise, and its stockholders.”
Do the directors bear any responsibility for these losses? The question before the Court in this derivative litigation was whether the plaintiff stockholders—New York and Colorado public pension funds—had adequately alleged, under In re Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation and Marchand v. Barnhill, that, as a result of the directors’ “complete failure to establish a reporting system for airplane safety,” or “their turning a blind eye to a red flag representing airplane safety problems,” the board faced a “substantial likelihood of liability for Boeing’s losses.” In a 103-page opinion, the Court concluded that the answer was yes—on both bases. (Other claims regarding the company’s officers and the board’s handling of the CEO’s retirement and compensation were dismissed.) It’s worth noting that this case is one of several Caremark claims in recent years to survive dismissal (see, e.g., this PubCo post). In Marchand, then-Chief Justice Strine remarked that Caremark presents a very high hurdle, observing that “Caremark claims are difficult to plead and ultimately to prove out,” and constitute “possibly the most difficult theory in corporation law upon which a plaintiff might hope to win a judgment.” (See this PubCo post.) In light of this series of decisions, you have to wonder—at least with regard to matters that involve “essential and mission-critical” risk and safety issues—if that’s still the case.

/ September 15, 2021
Corporate GovernanceSecurities

A “public benefit corporation” takes the IPO plunge (updated)

by Cydney Posner As previously discussed on this blog, a few companies have gone public as “Certified B Corporations,” but now we apparently have the first company to file for its IPO as an actual Delaware “public benefit corporation” (PBC). Earlier this month, Laureate Education, Inc., a global network of […]

/ October 13, 2015
Corporate GovernanceSecurities

Certified B Corporation files for IPO

by Cydney Posner Recently, the online crafts marketplace, Etsy, filed an S-1 for a $100 million IPO led by first tier underwriters. As reported in CFO.com, the company values itself at about $1.7 billion. What’s different about this IPO — aside from being about as far from the typical high-tech […]

/ March 25, 2015