I want to correct one point from what I wrote earlier about Shanika and the long-running Ceylon Weighing Machines dispute.
I said that, if I were the judge, I would dismiss her case as having no merit. Having looked more carefully at the issue, that statement was too absolute.
If Shanika was a minority shareholder and Lal continuously withheld company financial information from her, excluded her from information she was entitled to receive, or otherwise continued oppressive conduct over the years, she may have a legitimate shareholder-oppression case.
Sri Lankan company law recognizes that oppression does not necessarily have to consist of one dramatic event. The Supreme Court has recognized that a continuing series of acts—or even continuing inactivity—can form a continuing story of oppression up to the date proceedings are filed.
That means a refusal beginning around 2005 would be very different from financial information continuing to be withheld for many years afterward. If the conduct genuinely continued, the fact that the dispute began a long time ago does not automatically make the case frivolous.
So, on that point, Shanika may have been right to go to court.
My criticism is different.
If she knew for years that she believed her rights were being violated, I believe she should have acted much earlier and much more effectively. Allowing a serious corporate dispute to remain unresolved for something approaching two decades is, in my opinion, an extraordinary failure of judgment and execution.
But delay is not the same thing as having no case.
If Lal continuously oppressed her as a shareholder or continuously withheld financial information from her, that deserves to be determined properly by a court on the evidence.
None of this changes my separate position regarding AngryPages Inc. Her family litigation does not give her authority over my company, and I will not accept instructions from her about whom AngryPages should trust, invite, publish, employ, or conduct business with.
Those are two different issues, and they should remain two different issues.