2.3.3.5 Analysing court decisions

The fourth method involved analysing court decisions. Some of the participants had faced directors’ liability litigation either as defendant or as claimant representing the company.1 I analysed these court decisions and compared them to the interviews and used them to validate the information obtained. For instance, it was extremely important for the participants who had been defendants in proceedings that a court had ‘acquitted’ them of liability. For the participant who had acted as a claimant, it was important that a court had condemned the directors in question of acting with malicious intent, which had been the main reason that the participant had initiated legal action against the (subsidiary) directors.