“Clear Day” Corporate Travel Gets Green Light From Delaware Supreme Court
The Delaware Supreme Court’s February 4, 2024 decision in Maffei (TripAdvisor) v. Palkon has substantially reduced procedural friction for Delaware corporations considering reincorporation in other states. It reversed the Court of Chancery’s ruling that denied TripAdvisor’s motion to dismiss and comes nearly a year after TripAdvisor’s interlocutory appeal was accepted. As Sidley’s Jim Ducayet and Deepa Chari wrote last May, the appeal’s acceptance despite the Court of Chancery’s refusal to certify its ruling for interlocutory appeal demonstrated the Delaware Supreme Court’s “willingness to step in … to ensure the coherence and predictability of corporate governance.” This month’s decision affirms Delaware’s commitment to predictability and underscores that a clear day decision to reincorporate elsewhere should be protected by the business judgment rule.
The Final Chapter: Delaware Supreme Court Affirms Ruling in Favor of Larry Ellison and Safra Catz for NetSuite Deal Litigation
On January 21, 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Chancery’s post-trial opinion in favor of the Defendants in In re Oracle Corp. Derivative Litigation.
Five Delaware Cases All Venture Capital Players Should Know
Now and then this blog publishes compendiums of bedrock decisions and key principles of which M&A and Corporate Governance practitioners, and their clients, should be aware. This post takes the opportunity to highlight five relatively recent and important decisions that have shaped Delaware legal practice and discourse involving venture capital investment. Counsel representing investors and other players in emerging growth companies should familiarize themselves with this digest.
Delaware’s Appealing Interlocutory Review Regime
In a recent case, Palkon v. Maffei (TripAdvisor), the Delaware Supreme Court accepted an interlocutory appeal of the Court of Chancery’s denial of shareholders’ motion to dismiss. Such appeals are not common: Delaware Supreme Court Rule 42(b) expressly provides that “[i]nterlocutory appeals should be exceptional, not routine, because they disrupt the normal procession of litigation, cause delay, and can threaten to exhaust scarce party and judicial resources.” Even more unusually, the Delaware Supreme Court took this step over the Court of Chancery’s refusal to certify the appeal. This decision and others demonstrate the Delaware Supreme Court’s willingness to step in affirmatively, even mid-case, to ensure the coherence and predictability of corporate governance law — particularly when a matter of public concern is at stake. (more…)
Controller’s Ability to Appoint and Remove Directors at Will Insufficient to Establish Demand Futility
In Harrison Metal Capital, an investment fund with an 18% stake in a privately held company called MixMax, Inc. believed the CEO was committing financial improprieties, but found no legal recourse for its complaint. Although certain features of the case are unusual as a factual matter, the Court of Chancery’s analysis of demand futility in a company with a controlling stockholder will be applicable in more conventional derivative actions as well.
Carvana SLC Drives Away Derivative Case
On March 27, 2024, Chancellor McCormick granted the Carvana Special Litigation Committee’s motion to dismiss after finding no wrongdoing by the Company’s controlling stockholders in connection with its March 2020 direct offering and the controlling stockholders’ subsequent sale of Company stock for over US$1 billion. See https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=362010.
“A Bad Bull”: Chancery Court Rejects Plaintiffs’ Fee Application in Oracle Derivative Litigation
Plaintiffs’ bid for a US$5 million mootness fee in In re Oracle Corp. Derivative Litigation, C.A. No. 2017-0337-SG was denied by Vice Chancellor Glasscock, who noted that “not even great counsel can wring significant stockholder value from litigation over an essentially loyal and careful sales process.”
Entire Fairness Does Not Require Perfection
The Delaware Supreme Court recently held in In re Tesla Motors Stockholders’ Litigation, ___ A.3d ___, 2023 WL 3854008 (Del. Jun. 6, 2023) (“Tesla”), that an entire fairness analysis does not require perfection, so long as the acquisition itself was the result of fair dealing and fair price. Practitioners and boards engaging with a potentially conflicted transaction would be well served to study this opinion with care, particularly where the potential acquiror cannot (or chooses not to) employ a special committee of independent directors to handle negotiations.
Chancery Cancels Corwin for Post-Close Claims for Injunctive Relief
Earlier this month, Vice Chancellor Morgan T. Zurn of the Delaware Court of Chancery issued a decision regarding an unsettled question of Delaware corporate law: whether an uncoerced and fully informed vote of disinterested stockholders may ratify and defeat a post-close claim seeking to enjoin certain governance measures and alleged entrenchment devices negotiated by a company’s board as part of a transaction. The court concluded that such a vote, known commonly as “Corwin cleansing,” does not apply to post-close claims for injunctive relief under Unocal Corp. v. Mesa Petroleum Co. The court’s decision, at least for now, will have immediate significance for company boards and their advisors when negotiating transactions or stockholder agreements that include measures that may be characterized as defensive or entrenching existing management or directors.
Potential Control Does Not Equal Actual Control: Business Judgment Rule Protects Oracle-Netsuite Transaction
In a May 12, 2023 opinion following trial and post-trial argument, the Delaware Court of Chancery found for defendants Oracle founder Larry Ellison and CEO Safra Catz 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. The 10-day bench trial took place in July and August 2022 before Vice Chancellor Glasscock, and included two days of testimony by Catz and one day of testimony by Ellison, among other witnesses. The Court’s decision comes several months after plaintiffs’ voluntary dismissal, following the post-trial argument, of then-defendant Renée James, the Chair of a Special Committee of the Oracle Board overseeing the acquisition.
