Claims Against Directors & Officers
When a company experiences financial difficulty and fails to perform as shareholders or investors expect, they may bring claims against officers or directors based on claims that they somehow breached their fiduciary duties to the company or shareholders. Some claims have merit, but some claims result from disgruntled shareholders or investors who seek to impose their judgment as to what should have happened (with the benefit of hindsight) for that of the conscientious officer or director who used his or her best judgment at the time with the then available information. These disputes can be influenced by the existence (or absence) of directors and officers (D&O) insurance, which provides a defense to the director or officer, or in the case of a meritorious claim, a source of funds to pay damages to a company or individual.
Directors and officer claims can be very fact intensive, requiring the examination of thousands, even millions, of business and financial records. Regardless of what side of the dispute you are on, it is vital to your success that you hire a firm that can dig deep for, sift through, and synthesize volumes of information to support or dispel claims that officers or directors have acted wrongly.
Effective Advocacy in Director and Officer Claims
Chenoweth Law Group provides skilled litigation in aggressively prosecuting or defending against director and officer claims. Our attorneys are seasoned litigators with extensive business and corporate law experience. We also understand how insurance affects these claims and use that knowledge to the advantage of our clients, whether representing plaintiffs or defendants.
While public management liability claims are much more common and more likely to make headlines, private companies can face the same types of problems. The smaller the company, the more disruptive the lawsuit may end up being to operations and the growth of the company.
These claims can be brought for a broad range of issues, including allegations of:
- Breach of fiduciary duty
- Mismanagement of company assets
- Misappropriation of company funds
- Self-dealing and conflicts of interest
- Minority shareholder oppression and squeeze outs
- Inadequate disclosure of significant financial information
- Widespread employment law issues throughout the organization
Serving Clients Throughout the Pacific Northwest
From our Portland headquarters, our CLG lawyers handle business and commercial disputes for clients throughout Oregon, Washington, and California.
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