Bunuel wrote:
Under a corporate bylaw that was never invoked, the board of directors has been required to convene a committee for considering possible changes in top management when formally asked to do it by the owners of a majority of the outstanding shares of stock.
A. was never invoked, the board of directors has been required to convene a committee for considering possible changes in top management when formally asked to do it
B. was never invoked, there has been a requirement that the board of directors convene a committee for considering possible changes in top management when asked to do it formally
C. was never invoked, whereby the board of directors is required to convene a committee for considering possible changes in top management when asked to do it formally
D. has never been invoked, whereby the board of directors is required to convene a committee to consider possible changes in top management when formally asked to do so
E. has never been invoked, the board of directors is required to convene a committee to consider possible changes in top management when formally asked to do so
Official Explanation:Read the Original Sentence Carefully, Looking for Errors:The underlined portion of original sentence contains three potentially problematic verbs: “was never invoked,” “has been required,” and “asked.” As originally written, the verb tenses are mismatched in such a way as to create much ambiguity about the sequence of events. Let’s understand what the sentence is trying to communicate. The corporation has a bylaw (present tense), but this bylaw has never been invoked. Under this bylaw, a majority of shareholders can formally ask or require the board of directors to convene a committee to consider changes to top management (present tense or future tense). After thinking through the basic concepts, we can see how the original has all the ideas jumbled up in time.
Scan and Group the Answer Choices:We can focus on these three sets of verbs as we scan the answer choices. For “invoked,” choices (A), (B), and (C) retain “was never invoked,” while choices (D) and (E) change to “has never been invoked.” For “required,” choice (B) changes it to a noun and retains “has been,” while choices (C), (D), and (E) change to “is required to.” For “asked,” choices (A), (B), and (C) have variations on “asked to do it,” while choices (D) and (E) use the less awkward and more direct “asked to do so.” Note how choices (C) and (D) introduce “whereby,” an unnecessary legalism that’s sure to confuse the issue even more than the jumbled tenses.
Eliminate Wrong Answer Choices:The verb phrase "has never been invoked" is the correct way to begin the underlined portion, since it makes it clear that, in the entire history of the bylaw, up to the present time, it hasn't been invoked.
Choices (A), (B), and (C) are eliminated because they all retain the incorrect use of the past tense "was never invoked."
The difference between choices (D) and (E) shows only the addition of the word "whereby" in choice (D). The inclusion of "whereby" creates a sentence fragment. "Whereby" should not be included, so choice (D) can be eliminated. The correct answer is Answer Choice (E) because it properly clarifies the time frames of the events without adding any other errors.