| I originally had a thing about "piercing the corporate veil" written, but after some consultation with Google's shit AI[0], it told me about the legal writ of "quo warranto"[1], which was apparently used as legal proceedings in the US to argue for the dissolution of a company. So, in other words, we have a corporate death penalty, it just has a weird name, is mired in a bunch of weirdly English legal history, and it isn't very well used[2]. Also, the motion for the writ would have to be filed by Delaware's AG specifically. Also, also, this is a nuclear option. The primary hurdle of filing a quo warranto lawsuit against Facebook would be political, not procedural: Texas would really, really like to replace Delaware as the default state large enterprises incorporate in[3]. In fact, this process is already happening. Delaware made the mistake of enforcing their shareholder protection laws against Elon Musk's pay packet, so Texas is promising corporations a jurisdiction where shareholders donate their capital to the company for absolutely nothing in return except a token that they can pump the value of. In other words, Texas is a rotten borough that is stripping away all the ability for minority stakeholders to sue. So if Delaware actually moves to revoke Facebook[4]'s charter, that might scare every other corporation out of Delaware - including the ones that aren't obvious scams. There's probably some way Delaware could hold existing corporations hostage there, but that would be an even more thermonuclear option. That being said, I'm starting to wonder if the concept of a "nuclear option" is even meaningful in a world where "correctly deciding a shareholder rights case" destroys your reputation as a fair and neutral arbiter of those rights. Why bother keeping your powder dry if it's evaporating anyway? Go out with a bang and kill Facebook. [0] Which if Google hadn't enshittified their traditional search index, I wouldn't have to use this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quo_warranto#United_States [2] One may argue that the state doesn't use this very often because rapacious corporations happen to be useful to rapacious nation-states. [3] Confusingly, they're calling this "DExit", which is annoying because we already use "Dexit" to refer to Pokemon Sword and Shield not shipping with all the Pokemon in it. [4] It is always ethical to deadname corporations. |