Tag: Marchand v. Barnhill

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.