From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The corporate opportunity doctrine is the legal principle providing that directors, officers, and controlling shareholders of a corporation must not take for themselves any business opportunity that could benefit the corporation. The corporate opportunity doctrine is one application of the fiduciary duty of loyalty.
In a milestone in the settlement of the American West, President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the Homestead Act, a program designed to grant public land to small farmers at low cost.
Most people who claimed land under the Homestead Act were farmers and their children, however, because they had the skills needed to improve the land, while immigrants flocked to cities to ply the skills they already had. Some claims were also spurious, used to control things like water and timber rights for a profit.