Shareholders' Right To Litigation Research

The lawsuit of shareholders’ rights to know is one of the issues that are relatively controversial among corporate disputes handled by the court. New "Company Law" reinforces the protection of shareholders’ rights to know and specifies the conditions for shareholders to file a lawsuit against the rights to know, it is still not operable enough. As a consequence, shareholder’s litigation against rights to know falls into a judicial dilemma. The author attempts to explore the associations and rules hidden behind cases by analyzing classified data. Based on this, the author seeks to find out specific defects of the system, so as to propose pertinent suggestions for improving shareholders’ lawsuit against the rights to know in Chinese limited liability corporations.Starting from a case announced on the "Gazette of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China", the author points out how to improve the system of shareholders’ litigation against the rights to know and that the practical application of this system is an important issue encountered by people in the Introduction, demonstrating the approaches to investigate classified data and definition of the research objects.Chapter1gives an overview of the lawsuit of shareholders’ rights to know, which is subdivided into three parts. Part1firstly defines shareholders’rights to know in combination with various definitions from the academic circles and then analyzes the attributes of their rights to know. Part2examines the nature, characteristics, functions and jurisprudential foundations of shareholders’ litigation against rights to know. Pursuant to Chinese new "Company Law", Part3explores the legislative status of Chinese shareholders’ litigation against rights to know from the perspective of power extending and limitation rules.Chapter2analyzes the classified data on Chinese shareholders’ litigation against rights to know, which is subdivided into three parts. Aiming at relevant cases collected from the Gazette of the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China, www.lawyee.net and the author’s surveys, this paper conducts a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the classified data. Starting from concrete cases, Part1clarifies the features of the cases on shareholders’ rights to know. Next, Part2abstracts Part1and categorizes the cases on shareholders’litigation against the rights to know. Finally, Part3makes the system defects reflected from practices successively in combination with theories and practices.Chapter3covers the improvement of Chinese shareholders litigation against their rights to know. For the institutional problems indicated from above, this chapter proposes that related rules can be concretized and refined by judicial explanation. The suggestions put forward for improvement include:to clarify the approaches to handle the preconditions for shareholders’ litigation against the rights to know, expand Chinese shareholders’requests for litigation against the rights to know, identify the solutions to the allocation of responsibilities for providing evidences for "legitimate purposes" of shareholders’litigation against the rights to know, standardize shareholders’ways to exercise their rights to know and optimize the design of procedures for Chinese shareholders’ litigation against the rights to know.