Opinion ID: 2395587
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Plaintiff's Disclosure Claims

Text: When seeking stockholder action, directors must disclose all material reasonably available facts. [13] A material fact is one that a reasonable stockholder would find relevant in deciding how to vote. [14] It is not necessary that a fact would change how a stockholder would vote. It is necessary only that it would have been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the `total mix' of information available. [15] Directors must also disclose facts that, standing alone, may not be material if their omission in light of other facts disclosed would cause stockholders to be misled. [16] Plaintiff advances four nondisclosure claims against the SFD Board. He argues that the SFD directors violated their fiduciary duty of candor by failing to disclose: (1) equity valuations that Houlihan used in rendering its solvency opinion, (2) the amount of SFD's pre- and post-transaction surplus, (3) the decision of the SFD Board to alter the financing of the merger and self-tender by eliminating $75 million in newly-issued preferred stock and providing for an additional $75 million in debt, and (4) the manner in which defendants arrived at the $36 per share self-tender price. Whether a board's disclosures to stockholders are adequate is a mixed question of law and fact, requiring an assessment of the inferences a reasonable shareholder would draw and the significance of those inferences to the individual shareholders. [17] If the trial court's findings are sufficiently supported by the record and are the product of an orderly and logical deductive process, ... we will accept them, even though independently we might have reached opposite conclusions. [18]