A Legal Expert's Anti-ESG Battle Plan

Author and legal expert Bruce Abramson outlines a legal strategy for countering the left-wing takeover of corporations currently called ESG. I am not an attorney, but his argument sounds credible to me.

Here is the gist:

Image by Joel & Jasmin Førestbird, via Unsplash, license.

[C]orporate law offers a promising avenue of counterattack. The predictability of shareholder corporations earned them a simplified legal treatment subject to many helpful presumptions. Proud of their "evolved" ethical codes, stakeholder corporations have announced that such presumptions are misplaced.

Fair enough. Let the law take them at their word. Litigation and legislation must sever the legal treatment of stakeholder corporations from that of shareholder corporations.

Perhaps the cleanest -- and potentially the most consequential -- place to start is the Business Judgment Rule. This legal presumption allows every corporate defendant to arrive in the courtroom asserting that its decisions -- including those that prove disastrous for shareholders -- were made in the service of maximizing shareholder value. Plaintiffs -- whether employees, shareholders, or business partners -- complaining about corporate actions that failed to deliver bear the burden of proving bad faith, rather than mere errors in judgment. [bold added]

Legal strategies can backfire, and laws -- and "rules"-- can change, but it is good to know that there are things on the books now that can be used in an attempt to thwart the progress of this power-grab.

The ultimate battle is cultural, of course, meaning that the legal strategy above buys time at best.

But I do not mean to denigrate Abramson's strategy by pointing this out. Time is extremely valuable to those who know how to use it.

-- CAV