business law/Director Liability Law/ Fiduciary Duty/ Breach Of Duty Care & Loyalty
Order Description
Director Liability Law/ Fiduciary Duty/ Breach Of Duty Care & Loyalty
Q1) Ethan, Joshua and Daniel are all directors of quality sofa & bed Ltd. The company desperately needed to purchase a warehouse. At a board meeting, Daniel successfully persuaded Ethan and Joshua that on particular warehouse was perfect for the company and that it was worth $140,000. Ethan and Joshua later discovered that Daniel was the owner of the warehouse and it was worth $145,000.
Daniel who is a chartered accountant, is in charge of insuring the company’s warehouse against burglary and fire. He signed an insurance form without checking the content of its policy. The warehouse was burgled and the company suffered a loss of $30,000. The insurance company claimed that the insurance policy did not cover burglary and therefore refused to pay.
Ethan and Joshua recently found out that Daniel offered a cheaper price to a company’s client, Paul Ltd, from which he obtained a personal benefit of $3,000.

Advise Ethan and Joshua as to whether Daniel breached any of his duties as a director of Quality Sofa & Bed. Discuss duty of care and duty of loyalty Financial Crisis & Corporate Governance (250 words)

Q2, On October 25 2011, the Chairman and directors of Petrotin (a Trinidad based oil company) was called on by the lawyers of the Ministry of the Attorney General to pay damages totalling $1.2 billion (US$190 million) within 28 days. The lawyers are alleging breach of duty of care in the GTL project, which in September had a project cost of US$136 million and the costs have now escalated to US$240 million. The board are accused of making decisions to continue the project by approving 33 payments related to a guarantee of the project without due diligence to determine if the company could afford the payments or if the project can be finished on time. This decision was taken despite enough warnings of the cost escalation dangers. The case also claims that there was no “proper and detailed front end engineering design and clear development verification of the process” which clearly pointed to a breach of the board’s responsibility to apply due diligence in its handling of risk. (300 words)
What is the lesson learned from the case