I hadn’t written anything yet about the multiple shareholder actions challenging the merger of PokerTek — a developer and distributor of electronic table (gambling) games — with Multimedia Games — another developer and distributor of gambling technology.
The transaction was valued at $12.6 million, making it one of the lowest value mergers ever attacked in
Three interesting discovery issues were resolved last week by Judge Bledsoe’s Order in Gay v. Peoples Bank. First, can you obtain in discovery in a class action the fee arrangement between the plaintiff and his lawyers? Second, can you obtain (in any kind of case) a protective order against the deposition of your client’s
When I first looked at Judge Murphy’s (unpublished) Order in Ehrenhaus v. Baker earlier this month awarding attorneys’ fees to the class action attorneys who sued Wachovia and Wells Fargo over their merger in 2008, I was disappointed, though the Judge was following a mandate from the Court of Appeals.
He awarded $1 million in
Last week’s Order in Gusinsky v. Flanders Corp., 2013 NCBC 46, should be required reading for lawyers thinking of suing the directors of a corporation in North Carolina over a merger transaction. It provides guidance on the duties of directors in those transactions, whether the claims are derivative or direct, and lays down some heightened pleading requirements for some of those types of claims.
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to have never heard of Flanders Corporation. Flanders, based in Washington, NC, says it is the largest United States manufacturer of air filters. It was publicly traded until its shareholders approved a sale of the company via a merger in May 2012.
That approval by the shareholders came nearly a year and a half ago, but it was only last week that the NC Business Court dismissed a shareholder class action challenging the merger. In its Order, the Court dismissed the claims by the Plaintiff (a trust) for breach of fiduciary duty and for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty.
One claim of breach of fiduciary duty was an alleged failure to "maximize shareholder value" in the sale of the company, which Plaintiff claimed was a duty owed by the directors of Flanders to all shareholders. The other was an alleged failure to disclose information material to the deal.
There Is Rarely A Fiduciary Duty Owed Directly From A Corporation’s Directors To Its Shareholders
In dismissing the claim, the Business Court underscored the principle that directors virtually never owe a fiduciary duty directly to shareholders. The duty is owed to the corporation, not shareholders. Those claims therefore must be made derivatively, unless the circumstances of the "Barger rule" are met. (I’ve written about the Barger rule before).
It seems so obvious that this type of claim is derivative that you might be wondering how this class action plaintiff even argued its position. All it made was a couple of pretty anemic arguments which Judge Jolly shot down.
One was that the General Statutes contemplate fiduciary duties owed directly to shareholders. Plaintiff said that G.S. Section 55-8-30, which delineates the duties of directors, contains only one reference to a duty to the corporation and that the other duties prescribed therefore must be owed directly to shareholders.
That’s so wrong. The North Carolina Court of Appeals held last year that:
The drafters [of the Business Corporation Act] recognized that directors have a duty to act for the benefit of all shareholders of the corporation, but they intended to avoid stating a duty owed directly by the directors to the shareholders that might be construed to give shareholders a direct right of action on claims that should be asserted derivatively.
Estate of Browne v. Thompson. __ N.C. App. __, 727 S.E.2d 573, 576 (2012)(quoting Russell M. Robinson, II, Robinson on North Carolina Corporation Law § 14.01[2] (7th ed.) (citing Official Commentary, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 55-8-30 (1989)).
The Plaintiff also failed in its argument that it met the requirements of the "Barger rule." Plaintiff struck out on that score because the Flanders directors owed no duty to the class Plaintiff that was personal to the Plaintiff. The cases that the Plaintiff relied on were cases involving closely held corporations controlled by a majority shareholder. Judge Jolly found them not to be apposite.
Judge Jolly also ruled that a claim alleging inadequate consideration in a merger transaction was a harm to the corporation itsself, not to shareholders individually. He said that:
[t]his is so because a claim for inadequate consideration is, functionally, a claim for the diminution of the value of shares held by all Flanders shareholdrs. Without more, the ‘lost value’ of all shares of Flanders’ stock does not describe an injury peculiar and personal to Plaintiffs.
Op. Par. 32.
You can probably guess the rest of this story. If you can’t, remember that derivative claims require the prospective Plaintiff to make a demand on the corporation to pursue the claim before being allowed to file a complaint. This Plaintiff made no demand. As the Court observed, "A plaintiff’s failure to fulfill the statuory requirements for bringing a shareholder derivative action [is an] . . insurmountable bar [to recovery]." (quoting Allen v. Ferrera, 141 N.C. App. 284, 287, 546 S.E.2d 761, 764 (2000)).
So the first claim for breach of fiduciary duty for "failure to maxinize shareholder value" was dismissed.
Maybe one day North Carolina will be the center of the business litigation universe, but for now the center of that universe remains in Delaware.
The Order last week in Justewicz v. Sealy Corp., 2012 NCBC 57 — in which the Business Court stayed a North Carolina class action in favor of parallel
You probably remember the earlier opinion in Elliott v. KB Home, Inc., in which Judge Jolly certified a class action against the homebuilder KB Home over the improper installation of HardiePlank siding.
Last week, the Business Court ruled in another opinion in the case (2012 NCBC 55) that KB Home had waived its
If you think that tailors have nothing to do with class actions, you are wrong. Judge Jolly denied a motion for class certification last week because the proposed class was not "tailored" as was "practicable under the circumstances." Op. ¶37 & n.34 The case is Lee v. Coastal Agrobusiness, Inc., 2012
It’s about junk faxes and class certification again (and even again) in the Business Court. Wednesday’s decision in Blitz v. Agean, Inc., 2012 NCBC 20 marks the third time the Court has refused to certify a class action under the Federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act. (The TCPA, 42 U.S.C. §227, prohibits the transmission of
Yesterday, Judge Gale entered summary judgment against a North Carolina lawyer who claimed he was entitled to a greater share of a $3 million fee award to a group of plaintiffs’ counsel in a series of settled class actions. The opinion was in the case brought by the lawyer seeking an enhancement of his fee