Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1990
Publication Information
16 William Mitchell Law Review 1143 (1990)
Abstract
This essay describes the contours of the shareholder’s duty to be fair and explores some of the problems caused by the law’s imprecision in defining the duty of fairness. Because this duty is best understood as a rejection of old norms, part one of this essay describes the traditional doctrines of intra-corporate responsibility. Part two describes the special characteristics of a close corporation and outlines how those characteristics pushed close corporation law to new concepts of fairness and shareholder duties. Part three attempts to delineate those duties of fairness and also to highlight some of the dangers that arise when the law places fairness above predictability. Part four examines cases where close corporation law and employment law overlap, and uses those cases to show that parties can put some limits on the ambiguity of “fairness.” Part five uses the lesson from part four and makes concrete suggestions to practitioners.
Repository Citation
Kleinberger, Daniel S., "Why Not Good Faith?-The Foibles of Fairness in Closely Held Corporations" (1990). Faculty Scholarship. 38.
https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/facsch/38