Special Committee Chair Dismissed in Post-Trial Win

On December 27, 2022, after a 10-day bench trial in July and August 2022 and post-trial argument, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ stipulation to voluntarily dismiss Renée James, the Chair of a Special Committee of the Oracle Board in In re Oracle Derivative Litigation, 2017-0337-SG, a shareholder derivative litigation case arising out of Oracle’s US$9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite. This case is one of the rare post-Cornerstone director independence cases to proceed to trial, following an investigation and decision by a special litigation committee to return the case to the shareholder Plaintiffs to pursue.  The case was also procedurally unique as Plaintiffs opted to dismiss James following the 10-day trial and post-trial argument, rather than wait for an opinion from the Court.

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Trial Judgment “Knocks The Stuffing” Out Of Putative Derivative Suit Relating To Opioid Distribution

Last month, Delaware’s Court of Chancery issued two significant decisions in a stockholder litigation involving AmerisourceBergen Corporation (the “Company”) and its wholesale distribution of prescription opioids in the United States.  Together, the decisions provide companies and their directors and officers with further guidance regarding the viability of so-called Caremark claims alleging breaches of fiduciary duties.

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Camping World Plaintiffs Left Out In The Cold: Application of Zuckerberg Test For Demand Futility Bars Claim

In October 2021, in United Food v. Zuckerberg, the Delaware Supreme Court adopted a new three-part test for evaluating whether demand is futile in derivative suits. Prior to Zuckerberg, demand futility was long governed by Aronson v. Lewis (1984) and Rales v. Blasband (1993). The Aronson test excuses demand as futile if the allegations raise a reasonable doubt that “the directors are disinterested and independent” or that “the challenged transaction was otherwise the product of a valid business judgment.” The Rales test excuses demand if the allegations create a reasonable doubt that a majority of the board in place at the time of the demand “could have properly exercised its independent and disinterested business judgment in responding to a demand.” Without expressly overruling Aronson and Rales, the Delaware Supreme Court in Zuckerberg adopted a new three-part test, applied on a director-by-director basis, that excuses demand as futile if any of the three parts is true for at least a majority of the members of the board. The Delaware Supreme Court’s affirmance of the Court of Chancery’s holding in In re Camping World that the plaintiffs did not properly plead that demand was futile further cements the utilization of the Zuckerberg standard as the governing law in demand futility analysis.

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Board’s Good-Faith Oversight of “Mission Critical” Risks Insulates Directors from “Caremark” Claim

In 1996, the Delaware Court of Chancery issued its seminal decision in In re Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation, which establishes the framework for director oversight liability under Delaware law. Over time, Delaware courts frequently observed that this type of claim was “possibly the most difficult theory in corporation law upon which a plaintiff might hope to win a judgment,” and these claims rarely advanced beyond the motion-to-dismiss stage. However, in a three-year span beginning in 2019, Delaware courts denied motions to dismiss Caremark claims in five cases, leading some to question whether the Caremark standard has been relaxed. A recent Court of Chancery decision issued earlier this summer provides an important counterpoint to this recent commentary, while underscoring that boards must exercise rigorous oversight over “mission critical” risks.

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“Thick-As-Thieves” Narrative Persuades Court That Director Independence Is In Question in Carvana

The Delaware Court of Chancery recently denied a motion to dismiss stockholder derivative claims against Carvana Co. arising out of a stock offering Carvana announced in March 2020. The Court found that, based on the plaintiff’s allegations, it was reasonably conceivable that the stock offering had been orchestrated to take advantage of pandemic-related market volatility to benefit investors hand-selected by Carvana’s controlling stockholders. In doing so, the Court rejected the defendants’ arguments of demand futility and provided useful guidance regarding the types of allegations necessary to establish a director’s lack of independence.

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Don’t Let the Fox in the Henhouse: Lessons from the El Pollo Loco Decision on Special Litigation Committee Independence

In a recent split decision in Diep v. Trimaran Pollo Partners LLC et al., the Delaware Supreme Court, sitting en banc, addressed the level of independence required of members of Special Litigation Committees recommending dismissal of shareholder derivative actions. (more…)

Securities Litigation Against Life Sciences Companies: Eleven Takeaways from 2021

Securities class actions against life sciences companies are almost always second-order problems.  The first-order problem is a business or regulatory setback that, when disclosed by the company or a third party, is followed by a stock price drop.  Following the decline, plaintiffs’ class-action attorneys will search the company’s previous public statements in search of inconsistencies between past positive comments and the current negative development.  In most cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys will seek to show that any arguable inconsistency amounts to fraud—that is, they will claim that the earlier statement was knowingly or recklessly false or misleading.  Where a company makes the challenged statement in a public offering document (that is, a registration statement or prospectus), plaintiffs need only show that the statement was materially false or misleading, not that it was made with scienter, i.e., the requisite state of mind.

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Best Practices for Minute-Taking: Three Lessons from Recent Caremark Decisions

As has been frequently noted on this page, the Delaware Supreme Court’s landmark 2019 decision, Marchand v. Barnhill, marked the beginning of a series of cases in which Delaware courts refused to dismiss shareholder derivative actions alleging oversight breaches—so-called Caremark claims, which are often quoted as “possibly the most difficult theory in corporat[e] law” on which to bring a successful lawsuit. Typically following a books and records demand, these cases shine a spotlight not only on the oversight that boards perform, but also on the manner in which that oversight is documented in a company’s formal records. This post reviews, from a corporate record-keeping perspective, themes drawn from a selection of recent cases in which Delaware courts permitted cases to proceed on Caremark theories and implications for best practices in light of these themes. (more…)

Caremark’s Comeback Includes Potential Director Liability in Connection With Data Breaches

A Caremark­-based claim against a board of directors alleging a failure to monitor corporate operations has been said to be “the most difficult theory in corporation law upon which a plaintiff might hope to win a judgment,” or at least to withstand a motion to dismiss.  Yet, Caremark has taken on renewed importance — as noted by this blog — following recent high-profile successes on duty-to-oversee claims, most notably in Marchand v. Barnhill in 2019 and In re Boeing in September 2021, and recent shareholder lawsuits alleging that data breach- and cybersecurity-related failures would have been preventable were it not for oversight failures by corporate officers and directors, are being plead asserting Caremark claims. (more…)

Seventh Circuit Says Delaware Companies May Not Bar The Door To Federal Court For Federal Proxy Fraud Derivative Claims

I.        Introduction

The Seventh Circuit recently issued an important decision holding that an exclusive forum provision in a company’s bylaws requiring that all derivative actions be brought in Delaware Chancery Court is unenforceable as applied to derivative cases brought under the federal proxy laws. On its face, Seafarers Pension Plan v. Bradway seems to foreclose the use of exclusive forum provisions for claims for which there is exclusive federal jurisdiction. As the Seventh Circuit notes, that would seem to be consistent with both federal proxy fraud law, which forbids contractual waivers of compliance with the law, as well as Delaware state law. But as discussed below, there is reason to believe that the decision may not be the last word on the topic, and, indeed, that it could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. (more…)