News & Analysis as of

Shareholder Litigation Merger Agreements Fiduciary Duty

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer

Delaware Supreme Court reverses acquirer’s aiding and abetting liability, setting high bar, following precedent set by its recent...

On June 17, 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court (Court), sitting en banc, reversed a Court of Chancery ruling that had held a bidder liable for aiding and abetting fiduciary breaches of the target’s management....more

Vinson & Elkins LLP

Delaware Supreme Court Sets High Bar for Counterparty Aiding and Abetting Liability in M&A Deals

Vinson & Elkins LLP on

The Delaware Supreme Court’s June 17, 2025 decision in In re Columbia Pipeline Group Merger Litigation reversed a $199 million damages award against TC Energy for aiding and abetting breaches by fiduciaries of Columbia...more

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

Delaware Chancery Court Finds a ~27% Founding Stockholder Is Not a Controller

On July 2, 2024, the Delaware Chancery Court in Sciannella v. AstraZeneca dismissed stockholder claims in connection with the $3 billion merger of Viela Bio and Horizon Therapeutics in 2021. The merger was approved by Viela’s...more

Morris James LLP

Court of Chancery Dismisses Aiding And Abetting Fraud Claim Against Corporate Officers And Directors On Grounds That A Corporation...

Morris James LLP on

Urvan v. AMMO, Inc., Consol. C.A. No. 2023-0470 PRW (Del. Ch. Feb. 27, 2024, corrected Mar. 14, 2024) - It is an axiom of Delaware law that a corporation acts through its human agents. This principle informs the causes of...more

Goodwin

Delaware Supreme Court Holds That Boards Must Satisfy the MFW Framework in Controller Transactions to Obtain Business Judgment...

Goodwin on

In 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court held in Kahn v. M&F Worldwide Corp. (“MFW”) that a court will apply the entire fairness standard of review to freeze-out merger transactions between a controlled corporation and its...more

Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP

M&A in Brief: Q1 2024

In a letter ruling, the Delaware Chancery Court held that where neither the target nor the acquiror was a Delaware entity, the transaction documents between the parties could not confer jurisdiction in the Chancery Court...more

Hogan Lovells

In re Mindbody Inc., Stockholder Litigation: Court finds unfair sale process

Hogan Lovells on

In re Mindbody Inc., Stockholder Litigation, C.A. No. 2019-0442-KSJM (Del. Ch. Mar. 15, 2023), the Delaware Court of Chancery held that a CEO breached his fiduciary duties by taking steps the court found tilted a merger sale...more

Hogan Lovells

Q3 2021 Quarterly Corporate / M&A decisions updates

Hogan Lovells on

Below is our Corporate / M&A decisions update covering decisions in the third quarter of 2021. This update is designed to highlight selected important M&A, corporate, and commercial court decisions on a quarterly basis. The...more

Hogan Lovells

Quarterly Corporate / M&A Decisions Update: Q4 2020

Hogan Lovells on

Below is our Quarterly Corporate / M&A Decisions Update for decisions in Q4 2020. This update is designed to highlight selected important M&A, corporate, and commercial court decisions on a quarterly basis. Brief summaries of...more

Morris James LLP

Chancery Dismisses Stockholder Claims that a Minority Owner was a Controlling Stockholder or that a Majority of the Board was...

Morris James LLP on

In re: Essendant, Inc. Stockholder Litigation, C.A. No. 2018-0789-JRS (Del. Ch. Dec. 30, 2019). When as here a Delaware corporation’s charter contains an exculpation provision under Section 102(b)(7) of the Delaware...more

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

What's New in Corporate Governance and Securities Law - October 18, 2019

Corporate Governance and Securities Law Developments - Directors Can Be Held Liable for Failure to Oversee “Mission Critical” Regulatory Compliance - On October 1, the Delaware Court of Chancery refused to dismiss a...more

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Inside the Courts – An Update From Skadden Securities Litigators - December 2018

This quarter’s issue includes summaries and associated court opinions of selected cases principally decided between September 2018 and October 2018. ...more

Morris James LLP

Court Of Chancery Permits Validation Of Defective Merger

Morris James LLP on

The Cirillo Family Trust v. Moezinia, C.A. 10116-CB (Del. Ch. July 11, 2018) - This is an interesting decision for three reasons. First, it gives a good discussion of when defective corporate acts can be cured under...more

A&O Shearman

Delaware Chancery Court Holds That Well-Pled Unocal Claim Does Not Automatically Excuse Pre-Suit Demand

A&O Shearman on

On May 15, 2017, Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III of the Delaware Chancery Court dismissed a shareholder derivative action asserting that the directors of The Williams Companies, Inc. (“Williams”) breached their duty of...more

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

The Delaware Chancery Court’s Columbia Pipeline and Saba Software Decisions: Lessons beyond Corwin

Two recent decisions from the Delaware Court of Chancery faithfully apply the Delaware Supreme Court’s holding in Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC. No surprise there. Corwin held that when “a transaction not subject to...more

A&O Shearman

Massachusetts Supreme Court Affirms Dismissal Of Shareholder Class Action And Clarifies That Directors Generally Owe Fiduciary...

A&O Shearman on

On March 6, 2017, in a decision authored by Justice Margot Botsford, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the dismissal of an action for breach of fiduciary duty brought by former shareholders of EMC Corporation...more

Moore & Van Allen PLLC

NC Bar on Notice: Business Court May Increase Scrutiny for Approval of Disclosure-Only Class Action Settlements & Attorneys’ Fees

Rolling into the new year, North Carolina attorneys are on notice that the ability to gain approval of class action settlements and related attorneys’ fees may become more difficult in some cases. In recent years, we have...more

McCarter & English, LLP

Delaware Law Updates – Court of Chancery Puts Boards of Directors on Notice that Contracting Away Derivative Claims in a Merger...

Vice Chancellor Glasscock has held that a merger designed to eliminate derivative claims against a majority of directors justified the application of the entire fairness standard of review in a direct challenge to the merger....more

Stinson - Corporate & Securities Law Blog

Successful Two-Step Tender Offer has the Same Revlon Cleansing Effect as a Stockholder Vote

The plaintiffs in In Re Volcano Corp. Stockholder Litigation were former public stockholders of a company that was acquired for $18 per share in an all-cash merger. Just five months prior, the target company had declined an...more

Proskauer - Corporate Defense and Disputes

NY Court Of Appeals Rejects No-Opt Out Class Action Settlement In Shareholder Litigation

In Jinnaras v. Alfant, decided on May 5, 2015, the New York Court of Appeals rejected a proposed settlement of a shareholder class action, where the proposed settlement would have deprived out-of-state class members of a...more

Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP

Minnesota Court of Appeals Articulates Test for Direct Shareholder Claims in In re Medtronic, Inc. Shareholder Litigation

On January 25, 2016, the Minnesota Court of Appeals decided In re Medtronic, Inc. Shareholder Litigation, holding that a shareholder’s claim is properly characterized as a direct claim, not a derivative claim, even where all...more

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

M&A Update: Fully Informed Vote of Disinterested Stockholders Results in Business Judgment Rule Protection in Post-Closing Review...

In an October 2, 2015 decision, Corwin, et al. v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC., et al., the Delaware Supreme Court clarified that once a merger closes, as long as it has been approved by a fully informed vote of the...more

Brooks Pierce

Minority Shareholder Owed No Fiduciary Duty To Other Shareholders In Merger Transaction

Brooks Pierce on

Judge Gale's decision earlier this month in Corwin v. British American Tobacco PLC, 2015 NCBC 74 dismissed all of the claims of the Plaintiff class. If the name Corwin is ringing a bell with you, his case is the shareholder...more

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