In a shareholder derivative action, demand
was not excused as futile because of the allegation that directors breached
their duty of care by not having a succession plan in place upon the company CEO’s
unexpected termination, ruled the Delaware Chancery Court. The shareholder
claimed that the termination harmed the company by effectively leaving the
company leaderless, a harm that would not have occurred if the directors had
anticipated the risk and had in place a formal succession plan. (Zucker v, Andreessen , CA
But Vice Chancellor Parsons said that the
shareholder did not cite, nor was the court aware of any Delaware precedent that stands for the
proposition that failure to adopt a long-term succession plan amounts to a
breach of duty. Even accepting the assertion that long-term
succession planning is so critical to sound corporate governance that there
ought to be a fiduciary duty expressly requiring it and that the stockholders were
harmed because the board carelessly failed to implement such a plan, continued
the court, the shareholder did not identify any case law or allege any facts
suggesting that the directors have been or are on notice that such a failure is
a breach of fiduciary duty. Thus, the board could not have consciously
disregarded a known duty to act sufficient to rise to the level of bad faith.
In
these circumstances, there was no basis on which to find demand futility, said
the court, regardless of whether Delaware ,
as a normative matter, should adopt an express requirement that corporate
fiduciaries must implement long term succession plans. In reaching this
conclusion, the court did not address whether the duty of care requires
directors to adopt succession plans, and expressed no view on that issue.
Rather,
the limited holding of the court’s analysis is that there can be no substantial
threat of personal liability predicated on bad faith disregard of a
known duty to implement a succession plan because the shareholder failed to
allege a basis from which the existence of such a known duty reasonably could
be inferred. Any threat of personal liability, therefore, was insufficient to
raise a reasonable doubt that the directors could have responded
disinterestedly and independently to a pre-suit demand had the shareholder made
one.