A judicial determination of fair value in a private company can be a difficult and imprecise process. This difficulty coupled with variations in way mergers are negotiated and structured and the potential for conflicts of interest lend uncertainty to appraisal proceedings. As a result, corporate participants have powerful reasons to seek to limit the uncertainty associated with an appraisal proceeding ex ante. The response has been the growing use of shareholder agreements that limit appraisal rights.Appraisal waivers also offer a potentially attractive solution to a somewhat different concern, the growth of appraisal litigation in publicly traded companies. As with private companies, public companies face the problem that appraisal proceedings involve substantial cost and uncertainty. Although courts and commentators have grappled with how best to calculate fair value and the impact of that methodology on the incentives of participants in the merger process, they have failed to reach consensus. Appraisal waivers provide an alternative approach - a market-based mechanism to determine the efficient level of merger litigation.Public companies have not followed the lead of private companies, however, in using appraisal waivers. As this Article explains, the likely reason is the impracticality of using shareholder agreements in public companies and a concern that appraisal waivers in a charter or bylaw would be invalid.This Article considers both the normative and legal case for appraisal waivers. It argues that, with appropriate procedural protections – specifically the requirement that such waivers take the form of charter provisions -- appraisal waivers are normatively desirable. It then questions whether distinguishing between the use of appraisal waivers in private and public companies is appropriate and argues that it is not. The source of this distinction is a potential difference in the scope of private ordering available through shareholder agreements as opposed to the charter or bylaws, a difference that this Article critiques.The Article concludes that, under current law, the legal status of appraisal waivers is unclear. Given the potential value that such waivers provide, and the particular value that market discipline would bring to the scope and structure of such waivers, the Article argues for legislation validating a corporation's authority to limit or eliminate appraisal rights in its charter
