That is standard practice at any company with a governance problem and it was voted down eight to three.

And in February, four weeks before the merger vote, he made the request that everybody remembers, which was that the board require an independent medical examination of the chief executive before the transaction closed.

That one was wrong.

I want to say so clearly.

That request was, in my view and in the view of two employment lawyers I have since paid for opinions, almost certainly unlawful and definitely improper — you cannot demand a fitness-for-duty examination of an executive on the basis of rumor, and a board that granted it would have exposed the company to a disability claim that would have cost it more than the merger was worth.

August Pell ruled it out of order in about ninety seconds, and the room was relieved, and everybody went home feeling that Ross had overreached and that the matter was closed.