The Delaware Supreme Court recently reversed Chancellor Kathaleen S. McCormick’s post-trial decision upholding a disputed stock sale after concluding that the sale satisfied the entire fairness standard of review.  Although the Court affirmed the trial court’s entire fairness finding — Delaware’s most rigorous standard of review under which a defendant must establish that a transaction was the product of both fair dealing and fair price — it nevertheless reversed because the Court of Chancery concluded that entire fairness was the “end of the road” for judicial review and declined to consider the board’s motivations for the transaction.  Invoking the principle expressed in the seminal Delaware opinion in Schnell v. Chris-Craft that “inequitable action does not become permissible merely because it is legally possible,” the Supreme Court remanded the case for further consideration of the motivation for and purpose of the subject stock sale.

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