3.6 Concluding remarks & further research

I have demonstrated that it is possible to construct a simple model to determine directors’ liability. An integration of qualitative and quantitative methods proved to be successful and may be applicable to different legal domains where judges make decisions on the basis of open norms and contextual circumstances. The robustness and high predictive value of the model deserves further exploration. Future research should first determine factors that lead to a court’s assumption that a director was able to foresee damage. Second, the model should be validated by differentiating the statistical analysis of theoretically distinct forms of directors’ liability. Third, the fundamental question of what justifies the assessment of directors’ liability based on the factors obtained in this research should be explored. The answer to this question requires a normative study. Chiefly, the present research identifies influential predictor variables without engaging in a normative assessment of the legal reasoning in the legal domain of directors’ liability.