Alaska SCT Decides Alaska Native Corporation Shareholder Dispute

Here is the opinion in Rude v. Cook Inlet Region Inc.

An excerpt:

Robert Rude and Harold Rudolph are shareholders and former directors of Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (CIRI). They distributed a joint proxy solicitation in an attempt to be elected to the CIRI board of directors at CIRI’s 2010 annual meeting. Rude and Rudolph accumulated over one quarter of the total outstanding votes, but CIRI’s Inspector of Election refused to allow them to cumulate their votes. Thus, their votes were split evenly between the two of them and neither was seated. We conclude that the language of this proxy form required the shareholders’ votes to be equally distributed between Rude and Rudolph unless a shareholder indicated otherwise. We therefore affirm the superior court’s decision granting summary judgment in favor of CIRI on this issue.