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Business & Corporate Entities> Corporations> Shareholders & Other Constituents> Shareholder Duties & Liabilities
(Controlling Shareholder Duties)
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Small Business Stock Registration Forms
A company that decides to sell its shares to the public normally must file a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before the company may sell the shares, the staff of the Commission must declare the registration statement effective. The basic registration form (Form S-1) includes two parts, including part one, a prospectus or selling document, and part two, additional information required by the Commission that is publicly available but does not have to be provided to investors.
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"Persons" Subject to the Sherman Act
Sections 1 through 3 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.S. §§ 1-3, provide for prison terms, fines and damages to be assessed against "persons" who enter into agreements in restraint of trade or who monopolize, attempt to monopolize or conspire to monopolize trade.
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Corporate Criminal Liability
Corporations were not initially held criminally responsible for corporate activities. A corporation was considered to be a legally fictitious entity, incapable of forming the mens rea necessary to commit a criminal act. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected this notion in 1909 in New York Central & Hudson River Railroad v. U.S. A railroad company employee paid rebates to shippers in violation of federal law. The court upheld the corporation's criminal conviction, finding no reason that corporations could not be held "responsible for and charged with the knowledge and purposes of their agents, acting within the authority conferred upon them." The Supreme Court concluded that criminal liability could be imputed to the corporation based on the benefit it received as a result of the criminal acts of its agents. The case and its progeny have essentially imported the doctrine of respondeat superior from tort law into the corporate criminal realm. A corporation may be convicted for its agent's unlawful acts when the agent acted within the scope of his or her actual or apparent authority. Another theory of corporate criminal liability is the "collective knowledge doctrine." As knowledge of criminal activity is often the scienter element of a particular crime, the requisite knowledge can be imputed to the corporation based on the collective knowledge of the directors and officers.
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Meetings and Voting
Control of a corporation is exercised through its board of directors. Shareholders in turn elect the directors. In addition to straight voting of one vote per share, there are several methods provided by statute or corporate charter for calculating shareholder votes, including cumulative, class, weighted, and supermajority voting.
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