dog-leg claim. A claim brought by the beneficiaries of a trust against the board of directors of a trustee corporation, accusing them of breaching their duties. The basis of such a claim is that the directors are an asset of the trust and that it is their duty to benefit the trust rather than the corporation itself. The nomenclature appears to arise because this is a strategy to get around the premise that any breach by a director or directors was committed as an agent of the company therefore the breach is by the corporation not the individual. A dog-leg is typically a term for a sharp turn, most often in the fairway of a golf hole, based on the crookedness of dogs' hind-legs, hence the “getting around.”

Did you get that? Thus far such claims have been exclusively in U.K. where they have largely lost. In a 1911 case the court held that “directors stand in a fiduciary relation to the company, but not to a stranger with whom the company is dealing.” However there has been a recent spate of such cases, some of which have international implications.