Slightly Delayed "Live-Blogging" From the AALS

Over at the Glom, Gordon Smith recounts some of the discussion from the recent Business Associations Section meeting at the AALS Annual Meeting this past Thursday.  Like Gordon, I was particularly struck by the remarks of Delaware Chancery Court Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster on the issue of Say-on-Pay.  Here is some of Gordon's summary (you can find his entire post here):

[I]s there room for a Delaware claim on executive compensation in the wake of Say on Pay? Teasing the assembled law professors, Vice Chancellor Laster suggested that the Delaware courts could decide to review pay decisions with a form of enhanced scrutiny (because that standard of review applies to situations involving structural bias), but he rightly observed that such a move would be comparable to Smith v. Van Gorkom in 1985…. The more likely path to a claim is one already being pursued by a number of plaintiffs lawyers, namely, going after a board of directors for waste of the corporate assets…. If you couple such a claim with a bad vote on Say on Pay, you might have something.

One of the other things that struck me from Vice Chancellor Laster's remarks was his statement (according to my notes) that the Delaware judiciary is very aware of the "Zeitgeist." This means that while subjecting compensation decisions to enhanced scrutiny may constitute a "thermonuclear explosion" in corporate law, Delaware may nonetheless get there if the threat of further federalization of corporate law in this area becomes great enough.

For those of you not familiar with Vice Chancellor Laster, here is a short video wherein he mentions that his preferred theory of the corporation is "utilitarian":

 

SJP