“The Michigan Supreme Court found that “a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders [and that] the powers of the directors are to be employed for that end,” and intimated that cash surpluses should not be saved to invest in upcoming projects, but distributed to shareholders, because Ford had shown that it was good at making money. Ford was directly forbidden from lowering prices and raising employee salaries, and forced to issue a dividend.
To be clear, the statement around corporations’ duty toward shareholders was made “obiter dicta.” This means it was not actually legally binding, despite over a hundred years of people acting as if it was”