Product Description

Reflecting changes in the structure of contemporary business enterprise, Business Organizations: Cases, Problems, and Case Studies, now in a Second Edition, uses case law, problems, and case studies to examine the role and purview of law in real-life business transactions.
This innovative casebook offers:

clear descriptions of the development and current state of the law

up-to-date cases that feature interesting facts, as well as the major must-know cases

coverage of both modern business structures and growth industries

engaging business-school-style case studies based on real events encourage in-depth analysis of the application of legal principles in business transactions, and include:

extensive facts about the situation and businesses involved

excerpts from transactional and litigation documents

short problems that follow selected topics test students understanding of material covered

separate chapters devoted to limited liability companies and federal securities regulation, including:

a detailed case study of Enron and its role in shaping the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

a rich selection of teaching resources on a password-protected author website:

additional transactional and litigation documents related to the cases in the book

PowerPoints that cover the entire casebook o regular updates
a detailed and up-to-date Teacher s Manual

New to the Second Edition:
updated materials on Shareholder Proposals

revised coverage of directors duties, including the Disney case and Stone v. Ritter

Tooley v. Donaldson on direct versus derivative claims

new chapter focusing on limited liability companies

integration of the Restatement (Third) of Agency into Chapter 1
A wealth of materials, both in the casebook and on the authors password-protected website, gives you an almost unlimited ability to expand or deepen you exploration of specific topics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42591 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1056 pages

Customer Reviews

Frustrating casebook
Cases are largely unedited, often giving pages and pages of detailed factual information that is either not relevant to the point of the case or could easily have been summarized quickly. Also for the law student who is completely new to the language and concepts of business associations, the extraneous facts and concepts are confusing and frustrating.

Introductory material to cases and concepts is pretty minimal, so it's hard to know what you're looking for when reading the cases.

Also, it may be because many of the cases are really new (from the last 2-3 years), but I have 3 supplements and very few of the cases from the book are mentioned in these. (I bought the 3 supplements when I realized how unhelpful the book would be.) I would think that many of the seminal cases for these concepts would be the same in different books, but apparently not - so supplements aren't of great use with this book.

Not Very Good
This book is incomplete, incoherently organized, and worthless to a law student seeking a basic introduction to business organizations. The book compiles a bunch of cases in random order, and provides scant/incomplete commentary between them.

The cases are not edited, causing the reader to often wade through pages of facts before getting to the point. One often struggles to determine why a certain case is used to illustrate a point, or even why a case is in one chapter as opposed to another.

Unlike other textbooks, the supplementary and background material do not provide helpful context for this area of law. Instead, most areas seem to assume an enormous amount of background knowledge, or quickly gloss over complex (but key) concepts. The book does not present a framework for important areas. Instead, it just spews forth cases and expects the reader to understand why they are being presented. How these cases fit together is never explained.

Cases throughout the textbook are often presented in nonchronological and nonsensical order. The authors make no attempt to explain why cases are presented in a certain way or provide material that links the cases together into a comprehensible framework.

The "case studies" are interesting and hold promise, but are poorly executed and can leave readers confused and bewildered. Case study problems seem to appear at random, often having little relation to the concepts they appear next to. The authors fail to ask targeted questions or otherwise edit the case studies so that they would be useful in helping understand (recently presented) key concepts and think through complex issues.

If your professor assigns this book, you are better off downloading the cases from Lexis/Westlaw, and then doing your actual learning on your own. This book is little more than a compendium of these cases anyway--so save your money. To take the place of the material that you would usually expect from a casebook, read news about current business transactions and occasionally supplement with study guide materials. For example, reading the Wall Street journal and other business related news, including blogs. Gordon Smith's own blog, The Conglomerate, is an excellent resource (though his textbook falls short). Following this format will give you a helpful introduction to Business Organizations--something that you should not expect from this textbook.

At least you liked my blog!
As the author of this casebook, I think it's only fair to point out that the "Law Student" from Wisconsin who posted the negative review of the casebook was not using the second edition, which was not published until after the review was posted. While the cases in the first edition were not in a "random order," I suspect that the student would find the organization of the second edition more intuitive. As for the other elements of the book (e.g., the editing of the cases, the nature of the supplementary and background material, and the value of the case studies), perhaps these are a matter of taste, because many other students and faculty have offered praise for the way we have executed these elements. (Just not on Amazon!) And, of course, a student's perception might be colored by the views and skills of the instructor. In any event, I hope that students and faculty will decide for themselves. I love teaching from the book (of course), and my students seem to like it, too. And, if this is any indication, sales of the second edition are brisk.

P.S. Amazon would not allow me to post this response without rating the book. Hmm. What to do? Honesty usually serves me well ... so I gave the book five stars!