Effectiveness of judicial protection methods of the rights of a corporate agreement parties: experience of foreign countries

Abstract

The article is focused on studying the effectiveness of judicial protection methods of the rights of a corporate agreement parties in foreign legal systems. The author of the paper has analyzed legislative tendencies to reduce the list of possible methods of protecting the violated rights of a corporate agreement parties, defined by the latest corporate legislation compared to the previous Law of Ukraine “On Joint-Stock Companies”. New approaches in domestic judicial caselaw regarding choosing an effective method to protect the violated right by using the principle “the court knows the laws” have been studied. The author has formulated the factors that should be regarded while choosing the method of protection of the violated right, namely: a) it is necessary to use exclusively an appropriate method of protecting the violated right (established by law or a corporate agreement), which corresponds to the consequences of the violation and whose choice belongs to a plaintiff; b) such a method of protection must be effective. It has been systematized that the methods of protecting the violated rights of a corporate contract parties in foreign legal systems are divided into three groups: 1) mandatory (collection of penalties, damages, compensation), 2) corporate-binding (rescission of a contract) and 3) corporate (invalidation of a business entity decisions that violate the terms of the corporate agreement concluded by all participants). The author has analyzed such methods of protecting the rights of a corporate contract parties in foreign legal systems as compensation for damages, collection of penalties and stipulated damages, payment of compensation, enforcement of obligations in kind, etc. The necessity of harmonizing the national legislation in regard to a corporate agreement with a foreign method has been argued, in particular, the introduction of such a method of protecting the rights of a corporate agreement parties as compensation into Ukrainian legislation. It has been concluded on the basis of the conducted research that the list of the most effective methods of protecting the rights of a corporate agreement parties should be enshrined in the legislation, such as: compensation for damages, collection of penalties, collection of stipulated damages, payment of compensation, rescission of a corporate contract agreement or its certain parts, etc.