Delaware News

The state of Delaware is asking a federal appeals court to overturn a decision striking down as unconstitutional its practice of allowing corporate law judges to sit as arbitrators, deciding big business cases in secret.

Sitting en banc, the Delaware Supreme Court this month delivered an important message on two of the most hotly debated issues in corporate litigation: how courts should handle dueling shareholder lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions, and whether fast-filing class action and derivative plaintiffs should be accorded an advantage over late filers who prepare a more complete complaint. 

Attorneys for U.S. food giant Dole and Dow Chemical Co. asked the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn a lower court judge’s refusal to dismiss a lawsuit involving a now-banned pesticide linked to sterility.

One of the more vexing litigation problems to emerge recently has been the proliferation of multi-jurisdiction litigation, where corporate defendants are forced to litigate essentially the same claim in multiple courts at the same time. 

96% of mergers result in litigation alleging breach of fiduciary duty. This isn't because there are widespread breaches of fiduciary duty; it's because strike suits threatening to generate litigation expenses relating to the merger are highly profitable. The case settles with a tweak to the disclosures, and the attorneys walk away with over $1000/hour for agreeing to stop trying to hold up the merger. Courts are beginning to see through this.

There are five judges in Delaware Chancery Court and five more on the state's Supreme Court. We've asked a lot of them in the boom years of deal-related shareholder litigation.

The Delaware business court’s top judge, Chancellor Leo Strine Jr., insisted Friday that his recent decision to reject a proposed settlement in an M&A litigation case wasn’t meant to send a message. But a message came through loud and clear on the panel.

Documents in 12 major asbestos-related bankruptcies could be unsealed for the first time next month in a novel bid by a manufacturer to bolster its defense against a barrage of claims that its products caused deadly cancer and mesothelioma.

As a new report from Cornerstone Research affirmed on Thursday, shareholder M&A litigation is keeping a lot of lawyers awfully busy these days, especially in Delaware. But plaintiffs lawyers looking for guidance on a key provision of Delaware law related to such cases were turned away by the state's highest court this week, leaving them on the sidelines of derivative litigation over a $9 billion deal. 

A novel proposal to subject class action and derivative lawsuit settlements to a "market test" has been rejected by the same Delaware judge who initially floated the idea.