It's the view that the defense is going to argue and the prosecution will have to disprove.
>It's rare for any corporation to distribute most, if not all, of a companies FCF to shareholders
You can't convict people on "rare" behavior.
>then this kind of shareholder enrichment could be argued to be a gross mismanagement of company funds.
It's a private company. They have wide latitude to do whatever they want.
>And despite what the letter of the law says, I can't imagine wanting to support such a system where once can knowingly poison middle America for decades and run away with profits.
Yeah, the flip side is going after them jack ma style.
>This isn't a case where they were just "diversifying" as good financial advice - they foresaw their litigation issues in 2008. The fact it took more than 10 years to get to the court has more to do with the slowness of our justice system rather than the Sackler's financial savvy.
That does raise an interesting issue. If there's threat of litigation, how much money should you have to keep on hand? That should prevent the issue we saw with perdue. Should companies that are currently being sued be prevented from paying out dividends? What about companies that are being sued all the time, or frivolous lawsuits? What if the lawyers in 2008 claim (or even honestly believe) that the lawsuits have a slim chance of succeeding?