I see it somewhat different. The way I see it is that in a well stocked board (enough members and of sufficient gravitas) this decision would have never been made and if it would have been made it wouldn't have been made this way. The three outside board members found a gullible fourth and pushed their agenda with total disregard for the consequences because a window opened where they could. So they took their 15 minutes in the spotlight and threw out Sam, thinking they could replace him with someone more malleable or more to their liking. But the fact that they are the outside board members to begin with and that their action has utterly backfired puts the lie to their careful consideration and the case building against Sam, this is just personal. No board in its right mind would have acted like this and I'm relatively confident that if this all ends up in court it's going to end up with a lot of liability for the board members that do not defect and even the ones that defect may not be able to escape culpability: you are a board member for a reason, and you can't just wave a card that says 'I'm incompetent therefore I'm innocent'. Then you should have resigned your board seat. This stuff isn't for children.
