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Democrats Put Focus on Project 2025 · Bloomberg Law

0:03
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
0:10
Speaker 1: In her first campaign rally as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee,
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Speaker 1: Vice President Kamala Harris targeted Donald Trump and what she
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Speaker 1: called his Extreme Project twenty twenty five.
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Speaker 2: Donald Trump wants to take our country backward.
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Speaker 1: He and his Extreme Project twenty twenty five.
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Speaker 3: Agenda will weaken the middle class.
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Speaker 1: Like we know, we got to take this serious thing.
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Speaker 2: Can you believe they put that thing in writing?
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Speaker 1: Read it as nine hundred pages.
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Speaker 4: But here's the thing.
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Speaker 2: When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends
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Speaker 2: to cut Social Security and Medicare.
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Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five, the nine hundred page conservative manifesto
1:00
Speaker 1: by the right leaning Heritage Foundation, proposes a massive overhaul
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Speaker 1: of the federal government, including scrapping climate change rules, stopping
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Speaker 1: sales of the abortion pill, lessening worker protections, replacing civil
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Speaker 1: servants with Trump loyalists, and dismantling the Education, Commerce, and
1:19
Speaker 1: Homeland Security departments. Harris is putting it in the spotlight,
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Speaker 1: although Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have been using it
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Speaker 1: to showcase the threats to the country if Trump wins
1:32
Speaker 1: the White House again.
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Speaker 5: It's a blue crid for the second Trump term that
1:36
Speaker 5: every American should read and understand. Now. Of course Trump
1:40
Speaker 5: is lying about him now, he said, tries to this
1:43
Speaker 5: is himself, just like he's tried to this himself for
1:46
Speaker 5: Overturny Grovy Wade.
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Speaker 1: And recent polling shows there's been a dramatic uptick in
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Speaker 1: awareness and negative views of Project twenty twenty five since
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Speaker 1: late June, when Democrats began emphasizing the plan as it's
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Speaker 1: a central plank of their campaign against Trump. Trump has
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Speaker 1: tried to distance himself from Project twenty twenty five. The
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Speaker 1: critics point out that it was led by former officials
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Speaker 1: in his administration. Joining me is Bloomberg Lobbying and legal
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Speaker 1: affairs reporter Emily Burnbaum. Emily tell us the point of
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Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five what it's aimed at.
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Speaker 2: So, this is an effort spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation,
2:26
Speaker 2: which is a right leaning think tank in Washington. They
2:29
Speaker 2: brought together over one hundred conservative groups to create a
2:31
Speaker 2: playbook for a second Trump administration. It lays out a
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Speaker 2: very expansive vision for how to push a far right
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Speaker 2: agenda through every federal agency. Essentially, you know some of
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Speaker 2: The proposals that have gotten the most attention include using
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Speaker 2: power of the federal government to ban abortion, dismantling the
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Speaker 2: Department of Education, banning pornography. So there's a ton in there,
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Speaker 2: and the thrust of it is in visioning a truly conservative government.
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Speaker 1: Trump has said his campaign isn't affiliated with Project twenty
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Speaker 1: twenty five, but there are connections there, definitely.
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Speaker 2: So there have been tallies showing that over one hundred
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Speaker 2: and forty people associated with Project twenty twenty five served
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Speaker 2: in the Trump administration. It's led by former Trump administration officials.
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Speaker 2: A lot of the proposals in the plan itself echo
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Speaker 2: Trump campaign promises. So the connections are undeniable and they're
3:35
Speaker 2: increasingly difficult to shake as Democrats keep hammering on this.
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Speaker 2: You know, Trump tied to Project twenty twenty five. Trump
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Speaker 2: tied to the Project twenty twenty five ideas.
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Speaker 4: So this has been out for a while.
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Speaker 1: Why suddenly is it coming, you know, into focus for
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Speaker 1: the public.
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Speaker 2: Democrats have really leaned into this messaging around Project twenty
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Speaker 2: twenty five. You know, they're using it as a way
4:02
Speaker 2: to say, here's what the world will look like if
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Speaker 2: Trump is re elected. You know, sort of to scare people.
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Speaker 2: And also it was brought into the news just a
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Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago because the head of the Heritage Foundation,
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Speaker 2: Kevin Roberts, said that we are in the process of
4:21
Speaker 2: carrying out a second American Revolution to take back power
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Speaker 2: from the elite, and he said it'll be bloodless as
4:28
Speaker 2: long as the left allowed it to be. So that
4:30
Speaker 2: was really scary rhetoric, and I think that created another
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Speaker 2: opportunity for Democrats to point to this as a boogeyman.
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Speaker 1: And here's a clip of that Robert's statement, in.
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Speaker 6: Spite of all this nonsense from the left, we are
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Speaker 6: going to win. We're in the process of taking this
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Speaker 6: country back, and we are in the process of the
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Speaker 6: Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows.
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Speaker 3: It to be.
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Speaker 1: Do you think that Roberts and conservatives like him want
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Speaker 1: to get attention for this, even if it's negative A.
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Speaker 2: I think so. I think that they've been a little
5:03
Speaker 2: frustrated by how much they've been tied to Trump. You know,
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Speaker 2: the Trump campaign has continually pushed back. They say, we
5:11
Speaker 2: don't know these people. That doesn't make them look great.
5:15
Speaker 2: But I do think that they are standing by everything
5:19
Speaker 2: in the plan. You know, they're proud that they brought
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Speaker 2: together so many conservatives to come up with an agenda.
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Speaker 2: You know, when Trump came into power last time, one
5:27
Speaker 2: of the issues was that they didn't really know how
5:30
Speaker 2: to wield power effectively. They had some policy ideas you
5:35
Speaker 2: know about immigration, et cetera, but they didn't know how
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Speaker 2: to use the government to make that happen. So this
5:40
Speaker 2: is an effort to fill in that vacuum. So I
5:43
Speaker 2: think the more attention is on the plan, you know,
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Speaker 2: the more they're getting out their message.
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Speaker 1: If they didn't want to be tied to Trump, then
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Speaker 1: why did they have so many people who were in
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Speaker 1: the Trump administration writing these things.
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Speaker 3: It's a good.
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Speaker 2: Question, and they say, you know, this playbook could be
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Speaker 2: used by any few Republican administration. I think they want
6:04
Speaker 2: to create some daylight because they want to differentiate between
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Speaker 2: the conservative movement and the Trump campaign. You know, conservative
6:12
Speaker 2: movement has a broader vision, has more long term momentum
6:18
Speaker 2: than just the next four years.
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Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy,
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Speaker 1: including independent agencies like the Department of Justice, be placed
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Speaker 1: under direct presidential control and In the nine hundred pages,
6:32
Speaker 1: they take each of the departments and give suggestions about
6:36
Speaker 1: what should be done. So let's start with the Department
6:38
Speaker 1: of Labor. The section was written by Jonathan Berry, who
6:41
Speaker 1: headed the regulatory office at Trump's Labor department. What's the
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Speaker 1: sort of message here, anti working class, anti unions.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it's definitely very anti union, pro employer. And that's
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Speaker 2: according to labor experts who I talk to. A lot
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Speaker 2: of the proposals would just make life easier for companies, so,
7:05
Speaker 2: you know, it would make it harder to create unions.
7:08
Speaker 2: It would allow them to avoid paying over time. It
7:11
Speaker 2: would even allow miners to take on some potentially dangerous
7:16
Speaker 2: work as long as their parents that it was okay.
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Speaker 2: So it lays out a pretty pro employer visions under
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Speaker 2: Republican administration.
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Speaker 1: I thought that was so odd to let miners take
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Speaker 1: on dangerous work.
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Speaker 4: What is that about.
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Speaker 2: That's an increasingly popular position among Republicans. You know, a
7:36
Speaker 2: lot of this comes down to the administrative state. You know,
7:40
Speaker 2: there's this frustration among conservatives that Democrats have effectively taken
7:46
Speaker 2: over the government bureaucracy. They're imposing all these rules to
7:51
Speaker 2: push their vision of society. You know, and so this
7:53
Speaker 2: is their respond to that, and I think that, you know,
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Speaker 2: this is just a small piece.
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Speaker 1: Of that, and apparently wanting to undo labor laws that
8:04
Speaker 1: protect children. I thought it was strange that he denied
8:08
Speaker 1: in an email that Corporate America backs all of his proposals,
8:11
Speaker 1: pointing out he favors phasing out temporary guest work of visas,
8:16
Speaker 1: eliminating use of forced labor abroad, and giving workers time
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Speaker 1: off for Sabbath observance. Those particular things seem so odd
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Speaker 1: to single.
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Speaker 4: Out to me.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a lot of wonky
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Speaker 2: policy proposals in there. But you know, Jonathan Barry himself,
8:33
Speaker 2: he worked at Trump's labor department, like you said, then
8:35
Speaker 2: he revolved out to a corporate law firm called Boyden Gray.
8:40
Speaker 2: They take on a lot of conservative cases. Now he's
8:43
Speaker 2: representing companies, including a coalition of home care companies that
8:46
Speaker 2: are accused of feeling to pay over time. You know,
8:50
Speaker 2: he's plotting how to get back in the administration. I
8:52
Speaker 2: think it's a very Washington story. You know, the pro
8:57
Speaker 2: corporate agenda in government outside government, and then back in government.
9:01
Speaker 1: Then you have the Department of Energy and This was
9:04
Speaker 1: written by Bernard mcnamie, a Trump appointee of the Federal
9:08
Speaker 1: Energy Regulatory Commission. What are they looking to do with
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Speaker 1: the Energy Department?
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Speaker 2: Among other proposals, they should eliminate offices that work on
9:18
Speaker 2: net zero carbon goals.
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Speaker 4: You know.
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Speaker 2: They basically say the Biden administration has moved too fast
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Speaker 2: with green policies. They're trying to accelerate the energy transition
9:30
Speaker 2: too quickly. So he's calling for an end to the
9:33
Speaker 2: so called war on oil and natural gas, trying to
9:37
Speaker 2: pull back a lot of government efforts to fight climate change,
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Speaker 2: you know, create a much more oil and gas friendly
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Speaker 2: energy department.
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Speaker 4: The Department of Transportation.
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Speaker 1: Note was written by Diana I don't know if I'm
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Speaker 1: pronouncing this correctly.
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Speaker 4: Firch got Roth, a deputy.
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Speaker 1: Assistant director in Trump's Transportation Department. I just want to
9:57
Speaker 1: note that so far all of the authors has worked
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Speaker 1: in the Trump administration. Tell us about her proposals.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so the main message is that the Biden administration
10:10
Speaker 2: has moved too fast on electric vehicles, that they are
10:14
Speaker 2: subsidizing EV producers like Tesla at the expense of legacy automakers.
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Speaker 2: So a lot of her positions align with the positions
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Speaker 2: of you know, Ford and other automakers.
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Speaker 1: So how would Elon Musk, who's already given fifty million
10:30
Speaker 1: dollars to a Trump back, how would you.
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Speaker 4: React to this?
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Speaker 2: I think Elon Musk definitely wouldn't be happy with a
10:38
Speaker 2: lot of the proposals in this chapter. But I think
10:40
Speaker 2: part of his play is getting close to Trump in
10:43
Speaker 2: order to push his agenda to the Republican administration. So
10:47
Speaker 2: something a lot of people say about Trump is his
10:50
Speaker 2: opinion is informed by whoever he talked to last. So
10:54
Speaker 2: for Elon Musk, it's the very strategic play to get
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Speaker 2: really close to him.
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Speaker 1: The EPA chapter in Project twenty twenty five was written
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Speaker 1: by the former chief of staff for Trump's EPA administrator.
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Speaker 1: We can sort of imagine what it is, but tell
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Speaker 1: us a little more so her.
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Speaker 2: Vision of the EPA. They would cut a lot of offices,
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Speaker 2: so in general, it's a lot about shrinking the EPA,
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Speaker 2: which she says is bloated and bureaucratic, especially cutting offices
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Speaker 2: dedicated to climate protection. It would expand oil and gas leases.
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Speaker 2: It would shrink the workforce, so it would also halt
11:32
Speaker 2: grants to advocacy groups, so it would disentangle itself from
11:36
Speaker 2: a lot of the you know, pro climate groups that
11:39
Speaker 2: are operating on the ground. So it would it would
11:43
Speaker 2: really make the EPA much less effective as an agency.
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Speaker 1: Which Trump also did during his presidency. Now, the Department
11:51
Speaker 1: of Justice chapter was written by Gene Hamilton, who served
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Speaker 1: as counselor to the AGE during the Trump administration. Here
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Speaker 1: a lot of of sort of endorsement of conspiracy theories
12:03
Speaker 1: that we've been hearing, you know, since the Trump administration.
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Speaker 1: I want to read a quote from that chapter. Quote,
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Speaker 1: large swaths of the Department have been captured by an
12:13
Speaker 1: unaccountable bureaucratic menagerial class and radical left ideologues who have
12:20
Speaker 1: embedded themselves throughout its offices and components.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of this chapter is focused on, you know,
12:27
Speaker 2: this anxiety that the dj has been captured by what
12:32
Speaker 2: he calls the radical left, you know, pointing to the
12:35
Speaker 2: FBI bringing back up some of the concerns around Hunter
12:40
Speaker 2: Biden's laptop. So it really lays out a plan to
12:45
Speaker 2: ensure that conservatives are calling the shots at the Justice Department.
12:50
Speaker 2: It you know, envisions pivoting away from a focus on
12:53
Speaker 2: domestic terrorism, rejecting federal probes of police abuse. It calls
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Speaker 2: for actor duty military personnel and National guardsmen at the border,
13:03
Speaker 2: so kind of totally revamping the DJ turning away from
13:07
Speaker 2: civil rights, turning towards violent crime. That's the gist of
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Speaker 2: that chapter.
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Speaker 1: And the chapter on the White House by a former
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Speaker 1: Trump Deputy Chief of Staff. Of course, wokism has got
13:19
Speaker 1: to be in this somewhere.
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Speaker 2: Focism is basically in every chapter, and it's especially in
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Speaker 2: this chapter, which is one of the first. So it's
13:26
Speaker 2: about combating wokeism. It's about, you know, creating better connections
13:32
Speaker 2: with conservative media, you know, how to use the media
13:36
Speaker 2: to promote the president's agenda. And it focuses a lot
13:40
Speaker 2: on pushing back on what he says is the less
13:43
Speaker 2: aggressive attacks on life and religious liberty. So Rick Dearborn,
13:49
Speaker 2: you know, he's a lobbyist for a lot of companies,
13:52
Speaker 2: a lot of well known companies, you know, City Group, Rizon, Meta, Amazon,
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Speaker 2: and he is calling for a White House that is,
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Speaker 2: you know, corporate friendly and anti woke.
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Speaker 1: I think most people haven't read through this whole nine
14:08
Speaker 1: hundred pages and just know about the bullet points. Do
14:12
Speaker 1: you know how many of these they've distributed or sent
14:15
Speaker 1: to people.
14:17
Speaker 2: They're definitely trying to get this out across Washington, you know,
14:20
Speaker 2: like Project twenty twenty five is more than just a playbook.
14:24
Speaker 4: Two.
14:24
Speaker 2: They're also soliciting resumes for conservatives who want to serve
14:28
Speaker 2: in a Trump administration. They're doing trainings about how to
14:32
Speaker 2: use the levers of government to push a conservative agenda.
14:35
Speaker 2: So they're trying their best to push this across the
14:40
Speaker 2: conservative movement. Interestingly, there have been a few conservative groups
14:45
Speaker 2: that were associated with it at the beginning that have
14:49
Speaker 2: distanced themselves as it becomes more controversial. So we'll see,
14:54
Speaker 2: you know over the next month how many conservative groups
14:57
Speaker 2: are left standing as supporters of this agenda.
15:00
Speaker 1: Looks like the Democrats are not going to let it
15:02
Speaker 1: go easily. Thanks so much, Emily. That's Bloomberg Lobbying and
15:06
Speaker 1: legal affairs reporter Emily Burnbaum turning out a corporate law
15:10
Speaker 1: in the Delaware courts. The Delaware judge whose landmark ruling
15:14
Speaker 1: on shareholder agreements landed him at the center of a
15:17
Speaker 1: month's long legal drama, issued a novel decision yesterday in
15:21
Speaker 1: a dispute involving a Morgan Stanley subsidiary Vice Chancellor Jay
15:26
Speaker 1: Travis Laster handed six billion dollars to XRI Investment Holdings,
15:31
Speaker 1: ruling again for the water recycling company, two years after
15:34
Speaker 1: he took the rare step of asking Delaware's top court
15:38
Speaker 1: to overturn his decision in the company's favor. Joining me
15:42
Speaker 1: to sort all this out is business law professor Eric
15:45
Speaker 1: Tally of Columbia Law School. Eric, this is a very
15:49
Speaker 1: confusing set of facts.
15:51
Speaker 4: Can you walk.
15:52
Speaker 1: Us through it?
15:53
Speaker 3: Yes. The case itself was kind of an interesting case
15:56
Speaker 3: because it involved, you know, setting up various type of
16:00
Speaker 3: business structures to try to create what essentially amounted to
16:05
Speaker 3: kind of like a second mortgage or a subordinated loan,
16:09
Speaker 3: and so there were all kinds of constraints in doing it.
16:13
Speaker 3: But the person that was trying to basically use stock
16:16
Speaker 3: that he had in a company called XRI. He had
16:20
Speaker 3: some stock in this company and he wanted to you know,
16:25
Speaker 3: basically borrow money for another company to try to turn
16:29
Speaker 3: that company into a more profitable venture. But the problem
16:33
Speaker 3: was that he had already entered into this agreement not
16:38
Speaker 3: to use the stock that he owned as direct collateral.
16:41
Speaker 3: He couldn't, you know, do what's called getting secured loan
16:45
Speaker 3: secured against that because the company he owned a stock
16:48
Speaker 3: and had lent him money as well, and they basically
16:51
Speaker 3: were saying, look, if you don't pay it back, we're
16:53
Speaker 3: going to use that stock as the collateral for our
16:55
Speaker 3: first loan. He ended up working with his own lawyer,
16:59
Speaker 3: but then also worked with like the CEO of the
17:01
Speaker 3: company that he owned stock in, to try to set
17:04
Speaker 3: up a way to structure things so that he could
17:09
Speaker 3: still kind of borrow more money against the value of
17:14
Speaker 3: these these shares that he owned, but not to step
17:17
Speaker 3: on the toes of the company that already had that
17:21
Speaker 3: claim on those shares as collateral. So it was a
17:24
Speaker 3: little bit complicated because there are all kinds of balls
17:26
Speaker 3: in the air at the same time. But even though
17:30
Speaker 3: it was really complicated, it was also true that he,
17:34
Speaker 3: you know, had been working kind of hand in glove
17:37
Speaker 3: with the CEO of the company he owned stock in
17:41
Speaker 3: to try to you know, design this thing. And this
17:43
Speaker 3: was an old friend of his as well. And so
17:46
Speaker 3: you know where things ended up getting is things didn't
17:50
Speaker 3: go particularly well for this new business that he was
17:53
Speaker 3: trying to create. He wasn't able to make payments on
17:57
Speaker 3: his various loans, including that original one, and only then
18:03
Speaker 3: when relationships began to sour, did the guy that he
18:08
Speaker 3: was working with, the CEO, basically blow the whistle and say, oh,
18:11
Speaker 3: he set up this elaborate scheme and violated some of
18:16
Speaker 3: the contractual restrictions that he had agreed to long ago
18:21
Speaker 3: when he borrowed that first amount secured against the stock.
18:25
Speaker 3: So it was a you know, a kind of a
18:27
Speaker 3: big Rube Goldberg machine that absolutely this person had built,
18:32
Speaker 3: but he kind of was working with someone that was
18:36
Speaker 3: the CEO of the other side that would make a
18:39
Speaker 3: complaint about it, and they never really sort of voiced
18:43
Speaker 3: their own concerns until it was really really late in
18:46
Speaker 3: the game, and then they did.
18:49
Speaker 1: So that was the case that Laster got tell us
18:52
Speaker 1: what he.
18:52
Speaker 4: Did with it.
18:53
Speaker 3: He had to deal with what was kind of an
18:56
Speaker 3: odd situation in that, you know, when you sort of
18:59
Speaker 3: look at the from sixty thousand feet, you know this guy, yes,
19:04
Speaker 3: he probably built a Rube Goldberg machine that violated some
19:08
Speaker 3: of the terms in the deal that he had struck,
19:10
Speaker 3: but by the same token to the other side, at
19:12
Speaker 3: least the CEO the other side knew what he was
19:15
Speaker 3: doing and they didn't object to it until things really
19:19
Speaker 3: went south. And that's what Vice Chancellor Laster in his opinion,
19:24
Speaker 3: he wanted to sort of recognize this fact that you know,
19:27
Speaker 3: they kind of acquiesced in what he was up to,
19:29
Speaker 3: but the way that the law works didn't give him
19:32
Speaker 3: the ability to use this, this idea that you know
19:36
Speaker 3: they were in on it, and therefore they shouldn't be
19:39
Speaker 3: able to just foreclose and seize the shares away. So
19:43
Speaker 3: when he wrote that opinion, that first opinion, he almost
19:47
Speaker 3: asked the Delaware Supreme Court please overruled me on this,
19:52
Speaker 3: because I kind of don't like the outcome that I
19:55
Speaker 3: got to here, but it seems to be the outcome
19:58
Speaker 3: that our precedents have suggested for this case. And so
20:03
Speaker 3: then goes to the Delaware Supreme Court and they come
20:06
Speaker 3: back and said, no, by Standsley last year, you got
20:09
Speaker 3: it exactly right. We're not going to overrule you. The
20:12
Speaker 3: fact that you know that you know this guy had
20:17
Speaker 3: done something that was not allowed in his original loan,
20:21
Speaker 3: even if he was helped by this CEO, does not
20:25
Speaker 3: does not foreclose the conclusion that this was something that
20:30
Speaker 3: was in violation of his loan, And from the very
20:33
Speaker 3: moment he did it, it was void and they could
20:36
Speaker 3: just seize the shares back from him. So this this gentleman,
20:40
Speaker 3: mister Hollyfield, really kind of took at the chops from
20:43
Speaker 3: multiple directions, and by Standley Laster you kind of get
20:48
Speaker 3: the sense he sort of felt for the guy, but
20:51
Speaker 3: didn't see the law on the books to give him
20:54
Speaker 3: much relief. In the Delaware Supreme Court wasn't willing to
20:57
Speaker 3: go there either.
20:58
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of a judge sort of asking to.
21:02
Speaker 3: Be reversed, Well, it's not as unusual as you might
21:06
Speaker 3: think it would be, because I think a lot of
21:08
Speaker 3: times when judges sort of say, look, the law is
21:10
Speaker 3: clear on this, this seems somewhat inequitable, and it would
21:14
Speaker 3: be a good idea if someone at a higher level,
21:17
Speaker 3: whether it's a legislature or a supreme court, would sort of,
21:21
Speaker 3: you basically say we're going to do things differently, either
21:23
Speaker 3: with a new statute or by overruling an existing precedent.
21:26
Speaker 3: So a lot of times this is not a completely
21:29
Speaker 3: surprising thing for a trial court judge to say, look,
21:32
Speaker 3: I'm bound by the precedents that have been handed to
21:35
Speaker 3: me by, among other folks, the Supreme Court of Delaware.
21:38
Speaker 3: I've got to live within them. I think that leads
21:41
Speaker 3: me to kind of an outcome that seems kind of
21:43
Speaker 3: unfair here, and I want to signal to the Supreme Court,
21:46
Speaker 3: don't worry, I won't take it personally if you reverse
21:49
Speaker 3: me here, and in fact I invite you to consider
21:52
Speaker 3: doing so. What was sort of interesting, particularly in this instance,
21:56
Speaker 3: is that while by chances the last probably does get
22:00
Speaker 3: reversed more than the average judge for reasons largely having
22:05
Speaker 3: to do with his creativity, this is a situation where
22:07
Speaker 3: they chose not to reverse him and basically sort of
22:11
Speaker 3: continued the outcome that he got to that he felt
22:14
Speaker 3: uncomfortable with, but the Supreme Court of Delaware evidently felt
22:17
Speaker 3: more comfortable with it.
22:18
Speaker 1: Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
22:21
Speaker 1: this conversation with Columbia Law School professor Eric Tally, and
22:25
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that landmark ruling on shareholder agreements that
22:29
Speaker 1: landed Judge Laster at the center of a month's long
22:33
Speaker 1: legal drama and led to the Delaware legislature taking action.
22:37
Speaker 1: I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg. I've been
22:40
Speaker 1: talking to business law professor Eric Tally of Columbia Law School.
22:44
Speaker 1: What's with the length of these opinions? One with his
22:47
Speaker 1: was one hundred and fifty four pages. The Delaware Supreme
22:50
Speaker 1: Court came back with a seventy eight page opinion.
22:54
Speaker 3: Delaware Chancer Court opinions tend to be a little bit
22:58
Speaker 3: longer than others. I think this is in large part
23:01
Speaker 3: because they realize that people are watching right, that this
23:05
Speaker 3: is a transaction that has caused a dispute. But regardless
23:10
Speaker 3: of the holding that they have, there may be fifty
23:12
Speaker 3: sixty two thousand other future transactions that may be designed
23:17
Speaker 3: around the very holding of this situation. And so, because
23:20
Speaker 3: Delaware is such a focal area, even its trial court
23:24
Speaker 3: opinions can tend to be a little bit more on
23:27
Speaker 3: the on the lengthy side, simply to anticipate a bunch
23:32
Speaker 3: of the different ways that people might read it. Now,
23:34
Speaker 3: add on top of that the fact that that by
23:36
Speaker 3: chance the Last himself, you know, he does sort of
23:39
Speaker 3: relish the idea of trying to excavate the historical origins
23:43
Speaker 3: of some of these doctrines, and he did so in
23:46
Speaker 3: multiple ways here and sort of developed that in his
23:49
Speaker 3: early opinion. For someone who's sort of a student or
23:52
Speaker 3: a researcher in the origins of Delaware jurisprudence or just
23:57
Speaker 3: common law jurisprudence. It's actually quite a tree to read
24:00
Speaker 3: these opinions. However, I have to confess and that when
24:03
Speaker 3: I a sign a Vice Chancellor Laster opinion, to my
24:07
Speaker 3: own students, there's a sort of a collective groan because
24:10
Speaker 3: they know they're going to be reading something that's one
24:12
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty hundred and sixty two hundred pages long.
24:15
Speaker 1: And then he had ten months of additional proceedings. This
24:19
Speaker 1: case is never ending. What took ten months.
24:22
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that the court basically said,
24:24
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court said, is no, no, no. It turns
24:26
Speaker 3: out that they were well within their rights to just
24:29
Speaker 3: seize this stock away from this guy because he had
24:32
Speaker 3: violated his original loan agreements. But now you've got to
24:36
Speaker 3: go back and determine whether there are additional damages that
24:41
Speaker 3: are due to the original lender. And those took a
24:45
Speaker 3: couple of different forms. One because our defendant in this
24:48
Speaker 3: case held stock in this company. That company had lent
24:51
Speaker 3: him money. He was also a board member of that company,
24:54
Speaker 3: and most companies have an indemnification provision in their governance
24:59
Speaker 3: Dockments basically says, if we get into litigation with you,
25:02
Speaker 3: we have to pay for your attorney spees. And they
25:04
Speaker 3: had one with this guy as well. Now that seems
25:07
Speaker 3: a little bit weird when you are suing someone and
25:09
Speaker 3: then you're having to pay your own attorney and pay
25:11
Speaker 3: theirs as well. And so a lot of these indemnification provisions,
25:14
Speaker 3: and this one was true. In addition, have a kind
25:18
Speaker 3: of an off switch that says, you know, if you
25:20
Speaker 3: behave in a way that was either fraudulent or willful
25:24
Speaker 3: or grossly negligent, then we get to claw back the
25:28
Speaker 3: attorney speed. So part of what by stance Laster had
25:32
Speaker 3: to do once the case came back is to ask
25:35
Speaker 3: what does it mean to willfully breach one of these agreements?
25:40
Speaker 3: And did this individual do so? And ultimately he determined
25:44
Speaker 3: that the person had willfully breached the agreement and because
25:48
Speaker 3: of that, the company got to claw back the attorney
25:51
Speaker 3: spees that they had been paying. You know, this guy's
25:54
Speaker 3: attorney spees that they got to claw back those those payments.
25:57
Speaker 3: The other thing that he had to inherit, you know,
26:01
Speaker 3: there was this initial loan and then this defendant had
26:04
Speaker 3: had a loan with another you know, with this other lender,
26:07
Speaker 3: and the shares were kind of caught up. Who who,
26:10
Speaker 3: you know basically could claim these shares as collateral. So
26:13
Speaker 3: the two lenders were litigating against each other, and then
26:16
Speaker 3: that eventuated in a big settlement. So our plane iff
26:20
Speaker 3: in this case said, not only should we have been
26:22
Speaker 3: able to claw back the shares, but we had to
26:25
Speaker 3: spend all this money on this other lawsuit, and that
26:27
Speaker 3: should be part of our damages that he could have
26:29
Speaker 3: foreseen that we were going to have to suffer. And
26:32
Speaker 3: so by Chancellor Alaster had to adjudicate that as well,
26:36
Speaker 3: and he also said, yeah, there were payments in that
26:39
Speaker 3: external lawsuit that they also had to pay. So when
26:43
Speaker 3: this case came back and by Chancellor Alaster got it,
26:45
Speaker 3: not only did the Supreme Court, hell know, your original
26:48
Speaker 3: opinion is going to hold water and we're not going
26:51
Speaker 3: to reverse it, but now you need to assess further
26:55
Speaker 3: damages against this person that he's going to have to
26:58
Speaker 3: pay because of his original violation of his contractual obligation.
27:04
Speaker 3: So this most recent opinion was basically by chance Or
27:07
Speaker 3: Laster then trying to unpack what those additional damages would
27:10
Speaker 3: be you really need to.
27:12
Speaker 1: Make a diagram to try to keep this all straight.
27:16
Speaker 1: Is this latest opinion controversial.
27:18
Speaker 3: Well, in some ways it's not amazingly controversial, But there
27:21
Speaker 3: are a couple things that I think are really interesting
27:23
Speaker 3: about it. So one is this idea. And when you
27:26
Speaker 3: read the opinion, you do kind of get this sense
27:29
Speaker 3: that the person who ends up being held liable here,
27:32
Speaker 3: you know, he wasn't completely above board on everything. But
27:37
Speaker 3: there was also a sense to the other side knew
27:38
Speaker 3: what was going on as well. So the fact that
27:40
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court didn't give by chances laster here or
27:44
Speaker 3: more generally, other trial courts the discretion to kind of
27:48
Speaker 3: pull back to sixty thousand feet and say we're going
27:50
Speaker 3: to try to do what's fair under the circumstances, that
27:53
Speaker 3: I think is a little bit controversial, right, that the
27:56
Speaker 3: Supreme Court basically said, now, if you've done something that
28:00
Speaker 3: basically causes the deal that you've made to be to
28:02
Speaker 3: be void from the very beginning, even if people have
28:05
Speaker 3: acted in you know, possibly less than completely upfront ways,
28:12
Speaker 3: we're not going to give judges the discretion to kind
28:15
Speaker 3: of try to do justice on a broader plane, and
28:18
Speaker 3: I think that in some ways limits what the Delaware
28:21
Speaker 3: Chancery Court has historically done. So I think that's that's
28:25
Speaker 3: one thing that is possibly going to be a little
28:27
Speaker 3: bit controversial. There may be some other things about how
28:31
Speaker 3: do you calculate damages in this case that you know
28:34
Speaker 3: could stay alive. You know, one of the things that
28:36
Speaker 3: you know, if ice changed the last didn't try to
28:38
Speaker 3: do in the opinion, is to try to say, well, like,
28:40
Speaker 3: just how valuable were these shares that got seized back?
28:43
Speaker 3: Did these guys get overcompensated when they seized back these shares?
28:48
Speaker 3: And as a result, should I have shaved my damages
28:52
Speaker 3: but a little bit more to reflect the fact that
28:55
Speaker 3: they might I got it overcompensated. So I think there
28:57
Speaker 3: may be a few things that are you know, certainly
28:59
Speaker 3: for someone like myself who teaches and does research and
29:03
Speaker 3: contracts that are kind of in the weeds of contract
29:06
Speaker 3: damages law that are super interesting. And this case may
29:10
Speaker 3: end up casting a longer shadow, and it may not
29:13
Speaker 3: even be done at the Dallas Supreme Court level if
29:16
Speaker 3: in fact some of the computations of damages themselves get appeal.
29:20
Speaker 1: Tell us a little about last he had this decision
29:23
Speaker 1: that got a lot of attention that invalidated many shareholder agreements.
29:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was a decision not that long ago
29:31
Speaker 3: actually that invalidated some side shareholder agreements that had become
29:39
Speaker 3: a little bit more popular, particularly outside of the public
29:43
Speaker 3: company space, but also had never really been tested in courts.
29:49
Speaker 3: That basically gave a favored shareholder extra special rights to
29:54
Speaker 3: control what the board of directors does, and you didn't
29:57
Speaker 3: really even have to get the consent sometimes that even
30:00
Speaker 3: have to tell other stockholders about the existence of these contracts.
30:04
Speaker 3: And by chance to the laster had one of these
30:06
Speaker 3: opinions less than a year ago, and he came out
30:10
Speaker 3: with an opinion that basically invalidated those contracts. They said, look,
30:13
Speaker 3: you can't do this on a side contract. These are
30:16
Speaker 3: about sort of fundamental governance provisions that you know pretty
30:20
Speaker 3: much have to be in the charter of a company
30:22
Speaker 3: or its bylaws, but you can't hide him in a contract.
30:25
Speaker 3: And so he invalidated the contracts. It caused a huge
30:30
Speaker 3: storm when that came out, and a lot of folks
30:33
Speaker 3: who had you know, already advised their clients so it's
30:36
Speaker 3: okay to get into these side contracts. I think felt
30:39
Speaker 3: a little bit of a danger that, you know, there
30:41
Speaker 3: might be some egg on their face and they're they're
30:43
Speaker 3: already knee deep and executing even more of these contracts.
30:47
Speaker 3: And so over the summer this past summer, there was
30:50
Speaker 3: a concerted effort that was ultimately successful in getting the
30:55
Speaker 3: Delaware Assembly to essentially, you know, pass a new law
30:59
Speaker 3: that basically overruled Vice Chancellor Laster's opinion before it even
31:03
Speaker 3: went up to the Delaware Supreme Court. And that itself
31:07
Speaker 3: was quite controversial. I was one of several co authors
31:10
Speaker 3: of a letter to the Delaware Assembly is that this
31:13
Speaker 3: is a little bit hasty, it's a little bit fast.
31:16
Speaker 3: It seems to be that rather than you know, waiting
31:19
Speaker 3: for this appeals process to play out, parties have just
31:22
Speaker 3: decided to turn to the legislature to use the legislature
31:26
Speaker 3: to overrule a trial court opinion, which seemed somewhat unprecedented.
31:30
Speaker 3: And I can't think of other circumstances where it's happened.
31:32
Speaker 3: So five chances of Laster. Interestingly enough, in the span
31:36
Speaker 3: of you know, of a year, he got overruled by
31:39
Speaker 3: the Delaware legislature. But he didn't get overruled by the
31:43
Speaker 3: Supreme Court, which is what he really wanted to get
31:46
Speaker 3: overruled by. So this, this law now has been signed
31:50
Speaker 3: into effectiveness by the Governor of Delaware, and the legal
31:54
Speaker 3: permissibility of these side contracts now is evidently okay under
32:02
Speaker 3: Delaware law. But there's all kinds of open questions about
32:06
Speaker 3: how is that law going to come out? And much
32:08
Speaker 3: of this kind of started by what seemed to be
32:12
Speaker 3: kind of a strong pushback against a Vice Chances the
32:16
Speaker 3: Laster opinion. The opinion itself, you know, I've taught it,
32:21
Speaker 3: I've read it many times. It really is a kind
32:24
Speaker 3: of a by the book opinion. So so my sense
32:27
Speaker 3: is that, you know, Vice Chansor Laster's reasoning in the
32:30
Speaker 3: case was pretty consistent with Delaware law, and the fact that,
32:35
Speaker 3: you know, there had been so many examples of people
32:38
Speaker 3: basically saying, oh, don't don't worry, this is going to
32:40
Speaker 3: be okay. You know, if this is tested, it's not
32:42
Speaker 3: going to come out against us. That expectation got deeply disappointed,
32:47
Speaker 3: and I think that's what caused this really, you know,
32:49
Speaker 3: fairly fairly forceful rush to try to change Delaware law
32:54
Speaker 3: through its statutes.
32:55
Speaker 4: And what's his reputation.
32:57
Speaker 3: Well, Vice Chancel Laster is well known be an extremely
33:01
Speaker 3: thoughtful person. Uh he is. He is a person that
33:04
Speaker 3: like tries to to to reason from first principles and
33:09
Speaker 3: to try to sort of think where does this practice
33:11
Speaker 3: fit within the longer role that uh that you know,
33:15
Speaker 3: the Delaware Court of Chancery has you know, historically and institutionally.
33:20
Speaker 3: Now that sometimes rankles people because he is not a
33:25
Speaker 3: kind of I'm just going to go with the flow
33:27
Speaker 3: of what the cool kids are doing these days type
33:29
Speaker 3: of judge. And if if he can't find a way
33:32
Speaker 3: to reason to the outcome, he may well end up
33:36
Speaker 3: resisting that outcome. And and so that inevitably causes some
33:41
Speaker 3: frictions inside Delaware law. I find when I when I
33:45
Speaker 3: teach Vice Chancellor Laster's opinion, they're very long. So the
33:49
Speaker 3: students are a little bit are a little bit grumpy
33:51
Speaker 3: by the time I'm teaching the case because they've had
33:54
Speaker 3: to spend so much time reading it. But they're very
33:56
Speaker 3: well reasoned and they build up in a logical way
33:59
Speaker 3: to where they're going to end up getting. And this
34:01
Speaker 3: opinion that was you know, effectively nullified or at least
34:05
Speaker 3: going forward, was nullified by the legislature. It was similar.
34:09
Speaker 3: It was not a quick or slap dash and it's reasoning.
34:14
Speaker 3: It sort of built it up piece by piece, and
34:16
Speaker 3: so by chance to the last year, absolutely has a
34:19
Speaker 3: reputation of being a very smart, very articulate judge who
34:24
Speaker 3: also you know, is going to you know, try to
34:27
Speaker 3: reason his own way to the outcome. And if the
34:29
Speaker 3: reasoning doesn't hold together, it's unlikely he's just gonna you know,
34:33
Speaker 3: wave his hands at it and say, well, that's still
34:36
Speaker 3: good to the outcome, because that's just what everyone else
34:38
Speaker 3: is doing. So he's you know, maybe a little bit
34:41
Speaker 3: more of an iconoclastic judge than you will have elsewhere,
34:44
Speaker 3: but he's also a very engaged thinker. In the opinions
34:48
Speaker 3: that he writes.
34:48
Speaker 1: He certainly sounds like an interesting judge. Thanks so much, Eric, Best,
34:52
Speaker 1: Professor Eric Talley of Columbia Law School. And that's it
34:56
Speaker 1: for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Remember you
34:59
Speaker 1: can always get the latest legal news by subscribing and
35:02
Speaker 1: listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at
35:05
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash podcast Slash Law.
35:08
Speaker 4: I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg