"Individual or Collective Liability for Corporate Directors?" by Darian M. Ibrahim
 

Abstract

Fiduciary duty is one of the most litigated areas in corporate law and the subject of much academic attention, yet one important question has been ignored: Should fiduciary liability be assessed individually, where directors are examined one-by-one for compliance, or collectively, where the board's compliance as a whole is all that matters? The choice between individual and collective assessment may be the difference between a director's liability and her exoneration, may affect how boards function, and informs the broader fiduciary duty literature in important ways. This Article is the first to explore the individual/collective question and suggest a systematic way to approach it. This Article offers both a descriptive examination of how some courts have answered this question (often implicitly), and a normative analysis asking whether the courts' tentative answer makes for good corporate governance policy.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2008

Publication Information

93 Iowa Law review 929-971 (2008)

Share

COinS