Episode 322 -- Checking in on Caremark Cases
On May 14, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 29 (“SB 29”), which significantly reforms the Texas Business Organizations Code (“TBOC”). With these reforms, Texas aims to create a legal environment...more
This quarter’s issue includes summaries and associated court opinions of selected cases principally decided between November 2020 and January 2021. Derivative Litigation - Second Circuit Reverses Summary Judgment...more
Rule 23.1 of the Delaware Court of Chancery Rules requires a plaintiff asserting a shareholder derivative action to plead “with particularity the efforts, if any, made by the plaintiff to obtain the action the plaintiff...more
This quarter’s issue includes summaries and associated court opinions of selected cases principally decided between May and August 2019....more
On July 15, 2019, Vice Chancellor Joseph R. Slights III of the Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed an aiding and abetting claim asserted against a private equity buyer and its principals in a stockholder class action...more
A recent decision by the Delaware Chancery Court suggests that a litigant might forego the ability to file a books and records request if it waits to do so until after the lawsuit is filed. Last month the Delaware Chancery...more
This quarter’s issue includes summaries and associated court opinions of selected cases principally decided between September 2018 and October 2018. ...more
Under Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC1 and its progeny, “when disinterested, fully informed, uncoerced stockholders approve a transaction absent a looming conflicted controller,” the irrebuttable business judgment rule...more
This quarter’s issue includes summaries and associated court opinions of selected cases principally decided between February 2018 and May 2018. ...more
Several recent decisions applying Delaware law offer helpful insight about the impact that activist investor involvement has on board decision-making leading to a transaction and how those decisions will be reviewed by the...more
In a shareholder derivative action, to survive a motion to dismiss for failure to plead facts showing demand futility, a derivative plaintiff must plead particularized facts showing either actual involvement by a majority of...more
Delaware law provides important tools for directors to maintain control of derivative lawsuits.1 One such tool is the “demand requirement” embodied in Court of Chancery Rule 23.1, which requires that before a stockholder acts...more
Recent Delaware Supreme Court and Court of Chancery cases have continued to refine the impact and requirements of Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC, in which the Delaware Supreme Court held that the business judgment rule...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Delaware Supreme Court recently reversed the dismissal of a derivative complaint for failure to plead demand excusal because it found that certain directors of Zynga Inc. were not independent due to...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On November 30, 2016, The Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed two derivative suits filed on behalf of the Bank of New York Mellon (“BNYM”). The companion memorandum and letter opinions reaffirm the heavy...more
In In re Zagg Inc. Shareholder Derivative Action, No. 15-4001, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 11095 (10th Cir. June 20, 2016), the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that stockholders of a Utah-based, Nevada...more
Recent Delaware cases have helped clarify the limits of what the Court of Chancery will consider in a books-and-records demand under 8 Del. C. § 220, and one case has adopted a novel condition that defendants may seek to...more
In 2011, the Delaware Supreme Court in Central Mortgage v. Morgan Stanley Mortgage Capital Holdings, 27 A.3d 531, 537 (Del. 2011), unequivocally stated that the "pleading standard in Delaware to survive a motion to dismiss is...more
The Delaware Supreme Court will address the standard for pleading that an independent director has breached fiduciary duties in connection with a controlling shareholder buyout. The issue was certified for interlocutory...more
In Houseman v. Sagerman, C.A. No. 8898-VCG, 2014 WL 1478511 (Del. Ch. Apr. 16, 2014), the Delaware Court of Chancery (Glasscock, V.C.) granted, in part, a motion to dismiss filed by certain directors and the financial advisor...more