論離職公司負責人之忠實義務──從英國公司機會理論角度觀察

Post-resignation Fiduciary Duty of Director─From U.K. Corporate Opportunity Doctrine Perspective

在2001年公司法新增公司負責人忠實義務後，因欠缺忠實義務之具體規範，我國法院對於忠實義務所衍生之公司機會理論，向來並不關注。以至於公司負責人透過離職手段，於離職後利用公司機會獲取利益之案件，時有所聞。但近來有高等法院判決認為公司負責人於離職後，不負有忠實義務，此一法院見解與繼受忠實義務之外國法院判決有別。而因忠實義務所發展出之公司機會理論，英國與美國在公司機會理論方向有所不同。我國學說向來對美國公司機會理論之發展多有介紹，然較少有系統性介紹英國公司機會理論，因此在法政策上應採取英國模式或美國模式，並未詳加討論。而英國法院對於離職董事利用公司機會案例類型著力甚深，故本文透過英國法經驗，嘗試建構我國公司負責人於離職後忠實義務架構。

Company Act was amended in 2001 to imposed duty of loyalty on “responsible persons of a company”, however, due to the lack of specific norms of the duty of loyalty, Taiwan courts have never paid attention to corporate opportunity doctrine which derived from the duty of loyalty. As a result, there are often cases where “responsible persons of a company” exploit the opportunity to gain benefits by resignation. Recently, Taiwan High Court has ruled that there is no duty of loyalty when responsible persons resigned from company. The court decision is contrary to the foreign court judgements which affected by duty of loyalty. Although corporate opportunity doctrine was derived from duty of loyalty, U.K. and U.S.A was differed in the direction of corporate opportunity doctrine. Taiwan scholarship has always introduced the development of the U.S.A. corporate opportunity doctrine, but less introduced the U.K. corporate opportunity doctrine with systematically, so it has not been discussed what kind of model (U.K. model or U.S.A. model) should be adopted in our legal policy. Because U.K. court has paid greatly attention on cases of resigned directors exploiting corporate opportunity, this paper tried to construct Taiwan post-resignation duty of loyalty framework for “responsible persons of a company” by U.K. experience.