A business divorce may mean that the owners need to sell the business or the business’s assets. In the following case, some of the owners/officers took advantage of a sale transaction to benefit from that transaction at the expense of their co-owners. In Rex Performance Prods., LLC v. Tate, a company sued its former officers for breaching fiduciary duties related to the sale of the company’s assets. No. 02-20-00009-CV, 2020 Tex. App. LEXIS 10465 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth December 31, 2020, no pet.). The company alleged that the officers intentionally drove down the price of the sale in order to obtain a separate bonus from the buyer. The defendants alleged that the plaintiff knew of the side bonus agreement and consummated the transaction anyway, thereby establishing a waiver or ratification. The trial court granted summary judgment for the defendants, and the plaintiff appealed.

The court of appeals discussed the fiduciary duties owned by officers and directors:

Corporate officers and directors owe a fiduciary duty to the corporation that they serve. A corporate fiduciary is under an obligation not to usurp corporate opportunities for personal gain, and equity will hold him accountable to the corporation for his profits if he does so. The responsibility of the corporate fiduciary includes the dedication of his uncorrupted business judgment for the sole benefit of the corporation. As this court has noted before, it is without question that corporate officers and fiduciaries are “held ‘in official action, to the extreme measure of candor, unselfishness, and good faith.’” The duty of loyalty dictates that a corporate officer or director must act in good faith and must not allow his personal interest to prevail over that of the corporation. Directors and officers of a corporation must make full disclosure of their personal interest in a transaction that they are negotiating for the corporation. A transaction in which a corporate fiduciary derives personal profit is subject to the closest examination, and the form of the transaction will give way to the substance of what actually occurred.

Id.

The court of appeals first addressed the duty to disclose, and held that there was a fact question on that issue. The court held:

RPP did not have full knowledge of all information about the retention bonus agreements until after this lawsuit was filed. Considering the evidence in the light most favorable to RPP, whatever information RPP knew was learned only after the conduct by Tate and Cuffia had occurred and before the retention bonus agreements had been finalized… even assuming that RPP had some knowledge of the retention bonus agreements before it signed the asset purchase agreement, such knowledge does not bar a claim for breach of fiduciary duty. An after-the-fact disclosure of the facts that form the basis of a breach-of-fiduciary duty claim does not restore the parties to a position as if there had been no breach.

Id. The court also held that the defendants’ conduct also violated other fiduciary duties, other than a duty to disclose, and that the defendants did not move for summary judgment on those other breach claims.

The court then addressed the defendants’ ratification and waiver arguments. The court found that those were not proven as a matter of law because the sale transaction and the bonus transaction were separate transactions. The company approving the sale of the assets for a certain price did not preclude it from challenging the separate bonus transaction for the officers to which it did not consent. The court stated: “the retention bonus agreements were solely for the benefit of Tate, Cuffia, and two others. RPP neither agreed to nor accepted these agreements. In addition, only Pregis was responsible for paying the bonuses. Therefore, signing of the agreements by Tate, Cuffia, and Pregis cannot act as a waiver or ratification of RPP’s rights.” Id.

Finally, the court held that there was a fact question on whether the plaintiff suffered damages. There were emails that showed that the price for the assets went down due to the bonus agreement. In any event, the court held that damages were not necessary for the plaintiff to recover forfeiture or disgorgement relief. The court held:

[A] party seeking forfeiture and equitable disgorgement need not prove damages as a result of the breach of fiduciary duty. To remedy a breach of fiduciary duty, courts may fashion equitable remedies such as profit disgorgement and fee forfeiture. As explained by the Texas Supreme Court: “A fiduciary cannot say to the one to whom he bears such relationship: You have sustained no loss by my misconduct in receiving a commission from a party opposite to you, and therefore you are without remedy. It would be a dangerous precedent for us to say that unless some affirmative loss can be shown, the person who has violated his fiduciary relationship with another may hold on to any secret gain or benefit he may have thereby acquired.” Courts may disgorge all ill-gotten profits from a fiduciary when a fiduciary agent usurps an opportunity properly belonging to a principal or competes with a principal. Even if a fiduciary does not obtain a benefit from a third party by violating his duty, a fiduciary may be required to forfeit the right to compensation for the fiduciary’s work. “The main purpose of forfeiture is not to compensate an injured principal, even though it may have that effect. Rather, the central purpose . . . is to protect relationships of trust by discouraging agents’ disloyalty.” In its third amended petition, RPP pled for profit disgorgement or fee forfeiture due to Tate’s and Cuffia’s “many breaches of their fiduciary duties.” By relying on these equitable theories, RPP was not required to show actual damages.

Id. The court reversed the summary judgment, in part, and remanded the case for further proceedings.

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Photo of David Fowler Johnson David Fowler Johnson

[email protected]
817.420.8223

David maintains an active trial and appellate practice and has consistently worked on financial institution litigation matters throughout his career. David is the primary author of the The Fiduciary Litigator blog, which reports on legal cases and issues impacting the fiduciary…

[email protected]
817.420.8223

David maintains an active trial and appellate practice and has consistently worked on financial institution litigation matters throughout his career. David is the primary author of the The Fiduciary Litigator blog, which reports on legal cases and issues impacting the fiduciary field in Texas. Read More

David’s financial institution experience includes (but is not limited to): breach of contract, foreclosure litigation, lender liability, receivership and injunction remedies upon default, non-recourse and other real estate lending, class action, RICO actions, usury, various tort causes of action, breach of fiduciary duty claims, and preference and other related claims raised by receivers.

David also has experience in estate and trust disputes including will contests, mental competency issues, undue influence, trust modification/clarification, breach of fiduciary duty and related claims, and accountings. David’s recent trial experience includes:

  • Representing a bank in federal class action suit where trust beneficiaries challenged whether the bank was the authorized trustee of over 220 trusts;
  • Representing a bank in state court regarding claims that it mismanaged oil and gas assets;
  • Representing a bank who filed suit in probate court to modify three trusts to remove a charitable beneficiary that had substantially changed operations;
  • Represented an individual executor of an estate against claims raised by a beneficiary for breach of fiduciary duty and an accounting; and
  • Represented an individual trustee against claims raised by a beneficiary for breach of fiduciary duty, mental competence of the settlor, and undue influence.

David is one of twenty attorneys in the state (of the 84,000 licensed) that has the triple Board Certification in Civil Trial Law, Civil Appellate and Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Additionally, David is a member of the Civil Trial Law Commission of the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. This commission writes and grades the exam for new applicants for civil trial law certification.

David maintains an active appellate practice, which includes:

  • Appeals from final judgments after pre-trial orders such as summary judgments or after jury trials;
  • Interlocutory appeals dealing with temporary injunctions, arbitration, special appearances, sealing the record, and receiverships;
  • Original proceedings such as seeking and defending against mandamus relief; and
  • Seeking emergency relief staying trial court’s orders pending appeal or mandamus.

For example, David was the lead appellate lawyer in the Texas Supreme Court in In re Weekley Homes, LP, 295 S.W.3d 309 (Tex. 2009). The Court issued a ground-breaking opinion in favor of David’s client regarding the standards that a trial court should follow in ordering the production of computers in discovery.

David previously taught Appellate Advocacy at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law located in Fort Worth. David is licensed and has practiced in the U.S. Supreme Court; the Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Federal Circuits; the Federal District Courts for the Northern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas; the Texas Supreme Court and various Texas intermediate appellate courts. David also served as an adjunct professor at Baylor University Law School, where he taught products liability and portions of health law. He has authored many legal articles and spoken at numerous legal education courses on both trial and appellate issues. His articles have been cited as authority by the Texas Supreme Court (twice) and the Texas Courts of Appeals located in Waco, Texarkana, Beaumont, Tyler and Houston (Fourteenth District), and a federal district court in Pennsylvania. David’s articles also have been cited by McDonald and Carlson in their Texas Civil Practice treatise, William v. Dorsaneo in the Texas Litigation Guide, and various authors in the Baylor Law ReviewSt. Mary’s Law JournalSouth Texas Law Review and Tennessee Law Review.

Representative Experience

  • Civil Litigation and Appellate Law