I'm talking about the fact that this is a special situation, where the majority shareholder is also the CEO. In that case the board cannot effectively fire the CEO because he, as the majority shareholder, also had the power to nullify that. The only way to remove such a CEO is to sue and ask the Court of Chancery of Delaware to have the CEO removed and barred from further appointments as CEO. The board can't do that, as it's outside its authority.
The members of the board should have recognized the special nature of this situation, and take the only principled course of action possible here: resign and sue to have the CEO removed and barred; instead they let the interim CEO give himself a golden parachute (so much for protecting the shareholders, he was protecting his arse).