N.C. Supreme Court

Smoke Signals: No Fiduciary Duty For Minority Shareholders — At Least Not Yet

The following excerpt is reprinted with the permission of and with credit to North Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

Smoke has long been used for sending signals, but the North Carolina Supreme Court has sent some clear signals to stock owners while resolving a spat over smokes.

On Dec. 7 a narrowly divided court stubbed out a shareholders’ revolt over Reynolds American’s purchase of Lorillard Tobacco and reversed a Court of Appeals decision holding that a minority shareholder could owe a fiduciary duty to other shareholders. See Corwin v. British American Tobacco PLC, 2018 WL 6437701, Lawyers Weekly No. 010-093-18. But the court nevertheless strongly implied that it was inclined to accept the reasoning of Delaware courts that such a duty could exist under the right circumstances.

John Gresham Named 2018 Harkavy Award Winner

Labor & Employment Law

John Gresham is this year’s Jon Harkavy Award Winner. Last week, the Jonathan R. Harkavy Award Committee (John Doyle Jr., Michael Kornbluth, and Travis Payne) submitted this report to the Council of the Labor and Employment Section of the N.C. Bar Association:

John Gresham

The Committee developed a process to solicit nominations for the Jonathan R. Harkavy Award. An announcement went out in mid-March and a number of deserving and impressive lawyers were nominated. The nominations were circulated among the Committee members and, in early July, a conference call was convened for the members to candidly discuss the various nominees. Out of that discussion there resulted in a consensus that this year the Harkavy Award should go to John Gresham.

In at least some respects, the Harkavy Award is a recognition of a “lifetime” of achievement and service in the employment area of practice. Gresham, as most of his colleagues and friends call John, most certainly fits that criteria. John began his legal career in North Carolina in the mid-1970s, serving two years as a law clerk for United States District Court Judge James B. McMillan. He then joined the firm of Chambers Ferguson and Stein in Charlotte, where he ultimately became a partner. He stayed at that firm until 2011 when he joined the firm of Tin Fulton Walker & Owen.

Throughout his career, Gresham has focused on employment and civil rights/constitutional issues. He has litigated many cases and obtained decisions that have impacted the employment and constitutional law both nationally and within North Carolina. This includes Reed v. United Transportation Union, 488 U.S. 319 (1989), which expanded the time period in which union members could sue for violations of their rights. Perhaps of most significance for North Carolina is the decision that he obtained in Corum v. University of North Carolina, 330 N.C. 761 (1992), where our Supreme Court recognized a private right of action by citizens against government entities for violations of the rights enumerated in Article I of the Constitution of North Carolina, the Declaration of Rights.

Welcome To the Family Law Blog For 2018-19

Family Law Section

Ketan P. Soni, Communications Co-chair

This year, your Family Law Section Communications Committee Chairs intend to put some structure into blog posting to show the rest of the NCBA that the Family Law Section is where to look for model behavior. Let’s face it: We kind of “win” against most other sections, right?

What is blogging? It’s the “new” newsletter. We just had the Family Law Section Annual Meeting with the theme “Brave New World: Is the Future of Family Law Utopian, Dystopian or Somewhere in Between?” We are attempting to live those (utopian) ideals by moving toward providing more frequent information from and about the section. In any event, here’s the map:

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