In Stone v. Ritter, the Delaware Supreme Court attempted to end the debate revolving around good faith’s role in director fiduciary liability. The Stone court finally cleared up some doctrinal issues when it explicitly stated that good faith is not a freestanding duty on the level of care and loyalty. However, the court created a host of new questions and concerns - particularly in director oversight cases - when it included good faith solely as a subsidiary element of the duty of loyalty. The Stone court incorrectly held that the fiduciary duty of loyalty is not limited to cases involving a conflict of interest; loyalty also now encompasses director oversight cases. The court should have recognized that good faith is a necessary subsidiary element of both the duty of loyalty and the duty of care, and left director oversight in the realm of care.

The extent of director oversight liability under Stone remains to be seen. Whether the Chancery can appropriately apply the reformulated Caremark/Disney standard is anybody’s guess. If the recent contradictory decisions in Bear Stearns, Ryan, and Bridgeport are any indication, clarity and consistency in Delaware fiduciary law is a chimera.Fortunately, the Delaware Supreme Court’s cogent analysis in Lyondell, however, should provide some much needed post-Stone guidance.

In the wake of the current economic crisis, the Delaware courts need to recognize that the Stone formulation of good faith is inaccurate. The Delaware courts must also recognize that good faith is the overarching fiduciary goal, and thus, a necessary element of both the duty of loyalty and the duty of care.

This article examines Stone, including the factual basis and rationale of both the Chancery Court and the Delaware Supreme Court. This article then provides a concise history of Delaware’s constant repositioning of directors’ fiduciary duties. The article then analyzes the Delaware Supreme Court’s doctrinal shift regarding good faith and the duty of loyalty. This analysis includes both the conceptual and practical implications of good faith as a component of loyalty. This article also analyzes the Stone court’s improper repositioning of Caremark cases solely into the realm of loyalty. Additionally, this article analyzes the potential changes in section 102(b)(7) after the Delaware Supreme Court’s improper shift of good faith from care to loyalty, as well as the most recent - and inconsistent - post-Stone cases. This article concludes with a glance at the future of director liability and a proposed solution to the new quagmire presented by Stone. In brief, the Delaware courts need to recognize that good faith is the overarching fiduciary goal, and thus a necessary element of both the duty of loyalty and the duty of care. Further, the Delaware courts need to reverse Stone’s reframing of director oversight claims as primarily loyalty claims and reincorporate the appropriate Caremark duty of care framework.

Systemic employment discrimination cases, including private class actions and EEOC "pattern or practice" actions, have been used since the 1960s to redress overt forms of discrimination in the workplace. Today, however, there is an emerging area of systemic employment litigation that holds the potential to play an important role in combating the sources of structural or "second generation" discrimination: systemic harassment litigation. Unfortunately, litigants and courts are generally confused about how systemic harassment claims should be pursued and litigated. Harassment cases do not fit the mold for "pattern or practice" cases outlined by the Supreme Court in International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, leaving the federal courts divided over key substantive and procedural issues in systemic harassment cases.

In this Article, I propose a litigation framework and enforcement strategy for systemic harassment cases that is founded upon the statutory language of Title VII. By carefully observing the distinction between those provisions of Title VII aimed at protecting the interests of individual "aggrieved persons" and the separate provisions aimed at protecting the public interest, a sensible litigation framework can be formulated for systemic harassment cases. Failing to observe this statutory distinction has led the EEOC to pursue an ineffective enforcement strategy. The EEOC's focus in systemic harassment cases has been to obtain monetary damages for individual victims under an increasingly outdated rules-enforcement paradigm, rather than to obtain meaningful prospective relief. As a result, the EEOC has missed an important opportunity to begin addressing structural forms of discrimination. I propose an alternative public enforcement strategy for systemic harassment cases that focuses on obtaining effective consent orders that will usher in structural reform and will result in a more efficient allocation of enforcement resources.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act clarified the application of the EEOC charge filing period for purposes of determining whether a claim of compensation discrimination is timely. But a number of timeliness questions remain unanswered for claimants alleging discrimination on grounds other than compensation discrimination. This Essay examines one question left open after the enactment of the Ledbetter Act, specifically: When, if ever, does the EEOC charge filing period begin to run in cases where the plaintiff alleges that defendant engaged in a "pattern or practice" of unlawful "discrete acts" of discrimination? In this Essay, I consider the difficulties that arise when attempting to apply the seemingly straightforward timely-filed charge requirement to pattern or practice cases. I evaluate the policy arguments supporting the competing interpretations of the timely-filed charge requirement as applied to pattern or practice cases, and I suggest a number of possible legislative solutions that could provide certainty to employers and potential claimants.