This article outlines the development of English company law in the four centuries before 1900. The main focus is on the evolution of the corporate form and the five key legal characteristics of the corporation - separate legal personality, limited liability, transferable joint stock, delegated...

This article, prepared for the Business Law Prof Blog 2017 Symposium, examines the statutory grounds available to members who seek judicial dissolution of an LLC in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia. I also examined the judicial dissolution grounds in five model statutes: the 1992...

Despite widespread disagreement as to its merits, the doctrine of limited liability was formally introduced into English law by the Limited Liability Act 1855. The Joint Stock Companies Act 1856 substantially modified the 1855 Act, effectively rendering limited liability available as of right....

This project presents six years of hand-collected federal district court data to analyze the first representative sample of veil piercing litigation. Our method identifies veil piercing complaints through Westlaw's trial pleadings database and codes each case through a detailed examination of...

Following American initiatives, interest group efforts to acquire statutory limited liability have recently accelerated in Canada. Social elites have persuaded provincial legislatures to selectively alter conventional liability rules in a variety of contexts. There is no satisfactory analytical...

Underpinning the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was the ability by which businesses could raise funds because of the benefits of limited company status. When it became freely available, limited liability gained immensely popular. However, the crash of, and revelations of fraud at, the...