Ritchie v. Rupe

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Many Texas lawyers and their private company clients continue to refer to the claim for shareholder oppression as if it remains a viable cause of action under Texas law. And yet, for all practical purposes, the claim for minority shareholder oppression met its demise more than five years ago in 2014 in Ritchie v. Rupe[1]. In this landmark decision, the Texas Supreme Court held that a court-ordered buyout of the minority owner’s interest in a private company was not a remedy that was available under either Texas statutes or common law in response to oppressive conduct by the company’s majority owner(s).

The myth of the claim for shareholder oppression in Texas persists, because there is a lingering reference to oppression in the Texas Business Code [2], and because there is a strong continuing need for this type of remedy in response to majority owners who engage in conduct that is oppressive to minority shareholders or LLC members. [3] In Rupe, the Supreme did leave open the possibility that a court-ordered buyout could be a remedy for a breach of fiduciary duty committed by majority owners. The door that was left open to this remedy in Rupe, however, is not one that lower courts have been willing to walk through in granting or upholding a buyout remedy for the minority investor based on the majority owner’s breach of fiduciary duty.

Looking past the myth of claims for shareholder oppression, the legal remedy most often pursued by minority shareholders since Rupe is a claim for breach of fiduciary duty that is filed on a derivative basis. These derivative claims are the subject of this post.

Post-Rupe Shareholder Derivative Claims 

A shareholder derivative lawsuit based on breaches of fiduciary duty by the company’s majority owner is the chief legal weapon that remains available to minority owners (shareholders and LLC members) after Rupe. Minority owners have grounds to bring this claim when majority owners put their own self-interest ahead of the company’s best interests, which constitutes a breach of their duty of loyalty. In a derivative suit, therefore, the minority shareholders seek recovery for harm the company suffered as a result of the majority owners’ self-dealing.
Continue Reading Shareholder Oppression Claims: Looking Past the Urban Myth to Remedies that Continue to Survive Under Texas Law

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you.
—Its My Party, by Lesley Gore

Almost five years have passed since the Texas Supreme issued its decision in Ritchie v. Rupe[1] in 2014 abolishing shareholder oppression as a claim under common law by minority shareholders in private Texas companies.  Specifically, in Ritchie, the Supreme Court eliminated a court-ordered buyout as a remedy for minority investors complaining of oppressive conduct by the company’s majority owners.  The legal landscape remains bleak for minority shareholders, and when the five year anniversary of Ritchie arrives in June, minority shareholders still have no legal remedy to secure a buyout of their ownership interest if they failed to obtain a buy-sell agreement or other contract exit right at the time of their investment in the company.

In this blog post, we will review efforts made to address the problems created by the Supreme Court’s holding in Ritchie, both legislatively and in the courts, consider how the predictions the Court made in Ritchie have played out, and discuss the state of the current legal battlefield between minority shareholders and majority owners in Texas private companies.

No Legislative Fix for Ritchie Has Been Adopted or is Pending

In the aftermath of the Ritchie decision, the Texas legislature took a run at creating a statutory fix to address the Court’s removal of a buyout legal remedy for oppressed minority shareholders.  In 2015, the year after Ritchie was issued, Rep. Ron Simmons, a second-term Republican from Denton County, introduced Bill 3168 in the Business and Industry Committee of the Texas House.  This proposed Bill would have applied solely to closely-held entities rather than to all private Texas companies, and the provisions of Bill 3168 were broader than the pre-Ritchie state of the law.

More specifically, as originally proposed, Bill 3168 would have granted broad statutory powers to Texas trial courts, including the right to appoint a “fiscal agent” to report periodically to the court on the operations of the business.  This new type of statutory agent is different than a receiver and would likely be more akin to a monitor. In addition, the Bill intended to provide the oppressed minority shareholder with more than a buyout right as it authorized shareholders to pursue a claim for a dividend to share in the retained earnings stockpiled by the company, as well as the right to recover damages from the majority owner and/or board members who engaged in oppressive conduct that was shown to be harmful to the minority shareholder.
Continue Reading Melancholy Minority Shareholders: Five-Years after Ritchie v. Rupe, No Cause for Celebration by Texas Private Company Investors