Tag: Corporate Criminal Liability
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Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill: A Viable Project or a Doomed Battle?
[Malcolm Katrak is a Law Clerk to Justice (Retd.) S. N. Variava, Former Judge, Supreme Court of India] Recently, the Law Ministry affirmed the draft ‘Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2017’, which gives powers to the Government to confiscate property of economic offenders and defaulters. This Bill flows from the Finance Minister’s budget speech promising legislative…
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Supreme Court on Prosecuting a Company for Cheque Dishonour
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] The Supreme Court in N. Harihara Krishnan v. J. Thomas ruled yesterday on certain procedural aspects relating to the offence under section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 (“NI Act”) of dishonour of a cheque issued by a company. It held that any failure to include the company as an…
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Supreme Court on Vicarious Liability of Corporate Officers
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] [Guest post by Rahul Bajaj, a final year law student at the University of Nagpur and a SpicyIP fellow] The issue of corporate criminal liability has always been a vexed one, raising as it does profound jurisprudential questions that go to the heart of the separate legal status enjoyed by companies.…
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Supreme Court on Corporate Officers’ Criminal Liability
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] The Supreme Court of India on Friday issued its judgment in Sunil Bharti Mittal v. Central Bureau of Investigation on whether senior corporate officers are to be held criminally liable for acts of their companies. After an analysis of the law on the issue and its application to the facts of…
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Companies Act, 2013: Directors’ Duties and Liabilities
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] The NSE Centre for Excellence in Corporate Governance (CECG) has issued its most recent quarterly briefing titled “Directors’ Duties and Liabilities in the New Era”. The executive summary is as follows: – Since directors and the board play a pivotal role in corporate governance, the law foists duties and liabilities on…
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The Criminalization of Commercial Disputes
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] News reports indicate that the Supreme Court of India has ordered the chairman of Samsung Electronics to appear before a Ghaziabad court in relation to charges filed by a party in a contractual dispute. This is pursuant to an earlier judgment of the Supreme Court rendered on February 1, 2012 that…
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Guest Post: Directorship in a Company: Cap of Thorns
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] [The following post is contributed by Nidhi Bothra and Abhirup Ghosh at Vinod Kothari & Co. They can be contacted at nidhi@vinodkothari.com and abhirup@vinodkothari.com respectively] The Companies Act, 2013 (CA, 2013) brings about a sea change in the way the charter guiding corporate India will look like. The existing Act of…
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Court of Appeal: Clarification of ‘Meridian’ attribution
[Posted by Mihir Naniwadekar] The theory of attribution in common law turns significantly on the application of the two main cases: Tesco Supermarkets v. Nattrass [1972] AC 153 (which provides for a strict reading of who the ‘directing mind and will’ of a company is), and Meridian Global Funds v. Securities Commission [1995] 2 AC…
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The Bhopal Case: Supreme Court’s order on CBI’s Curative Petition
[Posted by Mihir Naniwadekar] We had previously highlighted discussions on the Law and Other Things blog pertaining to the decision of the Chief Judicial Magistrate in the Bhopal gas leak case. The CJM had purported to follow a 1996 judgment of the Supreme Court; in which, the Supreme Court had quashed charges under Section 304 (Part II)…
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Corporate Criminal Liability for Securities Offerings
[Posted by Umakanth Varottil] Mihir and I had previously discussed (here and here) the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Iridium Motorola case rendered in October 2010. We have now posted a more detailed analysis in a case note titled “Corporate Criminal Liability and Securities Offerings: Rationalizing the Iridium-Motorola Case” that is scheduled to be published…