This is a primer on attorneys as award-seeking SEC whistleblowers. It digests the relevant law and explains how it applies in real situations. That law includes the SEC attorney conduct and whistleblower award rules and each state’s ethics rules applicable to attorney disclosure. Fully assessing a particular situation will often require referring to the relevant rules for each state that might come into play for a particular lawyer in a particular situation. We therefore include information about choice of law and a chart summarizing the relevant rules in each of 51 US jurisdictions.

Our hope is that with this primer close at hand, attorneys and companies will not only be equipped to spot issues and apply the law, but will also understand how limited the circumstances are that will allow a lawyer to disclose confidential information to the SEC without client consent and seek a monetary award. This is true even though the SEC has expanded the circumstances allowing disclosure beyond those recognized in many states.

We will end with steps companies can take to deal with risks related to attorneys who are actual or would-be whistleblowers.

…continue reading: Can Attorneys Be Award-Seeking SEC Whistleblowers?

The prevalence of settlements in class and derivative litigation challenging mergers and acquisitions in which the only payment is to plaintiffs’ attorneys suggests potential systemic dysfunction arising from the increased frequency of parallel litigation in multiple state courts. After examining possible explanations for that dysfunction, and the historical development of doctrines limiting parallel state court litigation — the doctrine of forum non conveniens and the “first-filed” doctrine — this paper suggests that those doctrines should be revised to better address shareholder class and derivative litigation. Revisions to the doctrine of forum non conveniens should continue the historical trend, deemphasizing fortuitous and increasingly irrelevant geographic considerations, and should place greater emphasis on voluntary choice of law and the development of precedential guidance by the courts of the state responsible for supplying the chosen law. The “first-filed” rule should be replaced in shareholder representative litigation by meaningful consideration of affected parties’ interests and judicial efficiency.

Putting Stockholders First responds to the observation that in 2011, only 5% of settlements of shareholder litigation challenging mergers and acquisitions involved an additional payout to stockholders, 84% of such settlements were based on additional disclosure only, but all of such settlements involved payment of fees for plaintiffs’ attorneys. These figures reflect a significant change from 1999 to 2000, when 52% of suits filed on behalf of shareholders produced a financial benefit for the class, and only 10% of settlements were “disclosure-only.”

…continue reading: Putting Stockholders First, Not the First-Filed Complaint

At the Columbia Law School conference on the Delaware Chancery Court this November, I summarized my recent working paper The Corporate Shareholder’s Vote and Its Political Economy, in Delaware and in Washington. I discuss this paper below. Related work includes Delaware’s Competition, Delaware’s Politics, and Delaware and Washington as Corporate Lawmakers.

Shareholder power to effectively nominate, contest, and elect the company’s board of directors became core to the corporate governance reform agenda in the past decade, as corporate scandal and financial stress put business failures and scandals into headlines and onto policymakers’ agendas. As is well known to corporate analysts, the incentive structure in corporate elections typically keeps shareholders passive, and incumbent boards largely control the electoral process, usually nominating and electing themselves or their chosen successors. Contested corporate elections are exceedingly rare. But shareholder power to directly place their nomination for a majority of the board in the company-paid-for voting documents, as the SEC has pushed toward, could revolutionize American corporate governance by sharply shifting authority away from insiders, boards, and corporate managements. During the past decade, the SEC proposed, withdrew, and then promulgated rules that would shift the control of some corporate election machinery, to elect a minority of the board, away from insiders and into shareholders’ hands. Then, in July 2011, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the most aggressive of the SEC’s rules.

…continue reading: The Corporate Shareholder’s Vote and Its Political Economy

As with real estate acquisitions, where intra-corporate disputes are concerned, the key to optimal results is “location, location and location.” [1] The Delaware Chancery Court is widely regarded as the country’s preeminent business court, with experienced jurists who have deep understanding of Delaware corporate law and long standing precedent regarding corporations’ governance. Indeed, the enabling, practical approach of Delaware law, the extensive body of judicial precedent and the expertise and business savvy of the Delaware Court of Chancery are the reasons that most companies choose to incorporate in Delaware in the first place.

Unfortunately, plaintiffs’ lawyers often file cases against Delaware companies under Delaware law in jurisdictions other than Delaware. Often, this is because plaintiffs’ lawyers, particularly those with weak cases, hope that other, less experienced judges will misapply Delaware law, that the greater uncertainty of the outcome will increase the settlement value of the litigation [2] or that courts outside of Delaware are less likely to limit or reduce plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fee awards. [3]

…continue reading: Designating Delaware as the Exclusive Jurisdiction for Intra-Corporate Disputes