Sky Blog
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well — William Shakespeare, King Lear (1606)
The Delaware Court of Chancery has, for more than a century, honed unparalleled expertise in a unique body of corporate law based on equity – and …
Corporate law – and judicial application of that law – considers two facets of a transaction: (1) whether a corporation’s management used processes that are fair to stockholders to reach its decision (“process”), and (2) whether the economic results of …
The recent In re Edgio, Inc. Stockholders Litigation decision highlighted concerns when a public company involved in a business combination adopts defensive measures that would continue for a significant period of time post-closing. The court declined to apply Corwin cleansing …
On May 1, 2023, the Delaware Court of Chancery addressed an unsettled question under Delaware law—whether a fully informed, uncoerced vote of disinterested stockholders (so-called “Corwin cleansing”[1]) can be applied to defeat claims to enjoin defensive measures …
With all the SPAC activity and scrutiny over the past several years, it was only a matter of time before the Delaware courts had an opportunity to weigh in on SPAC stockholder litigation.
Early last year, in January 2022, Vice …
In re Dell Technologies Inc. Class V Stockholders Litigation (June 11, 2020) can be viewed as a routine decision analyzing the MFW prerequisites to post-closing review of a transaction proposed by a controlled company under the deferential business judgment standard. …
Importantly, the Business Roundtable (an influential group of almost 200 CEOs of America’s most influential companies) issued a “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” which has intensified a developing focus on the social …
U.S. corporate law adopts a regulation-by-litigation model where the efficient balance between incentives and filters is essential for litigation to perform its function. In this model, over-litigation is not only a detrimental distortion but also a significant indication that the …
Following Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings and other Delaware cases that have reinforced the standards that stockholder suits must meet to survive dismissal, would-be litigants have increasingly invoked Section 220 of the Delaware General Corporate Law (“Section 220”) to try …
On February 20, 2019, Skadden held a webinar focused on a number of important developments in Delaware corporate law in 2018 and how such developments might affect M&A litigation in 2019. Specifically, the discussion focused on (i) the increasing importance …
In a recent series of landmark decisions, the Delaware Supreme Court has constructed an orderly doctrinal framework designed to reduce wasteful post-closing merger litigation. These cases recognize that the market’s judgment is usually sound and that the costs of intensive …
Board Was Required to Disclose the Chairman’s Reasons for Abstaining From a Board Vote on the Sale of the Company
On February 20, 2018, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed dismissal of a shareholder action alleging that the board of directors …
Of all the conjured hazards faced by the teenage gladiators in the dystopian novel The Hunger Games, the Tracker Jacker (a genetically engineered wasp) was the most deadly and unpredictable when provoked. Dell Technologies Inc. may soon have to …
Beginning at least as far back as Professor William Carey’s famously withering 1974 Yale Law Journal article about Delaware’s “enabling” of bad corporate actors, critics of the state’s corporate jurisprudence have alluded to a “race to the bottom” in which …
Last quarter, the Delaware courts issued the first post-Dell appraisal decisions—Aruba and AOL (issued by the Court of Chancery) and SWS Group (issued by the Delaware Supreme Court, affirming the Court …
The first half of 2017 brought with it a nearly unprecedented rate of new filings (a pace few predicted), as well as several important developments in the securities laws. Among other things, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to weigh in …
The Delaware Supreme Court’s decision in Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC set a high bar for plaintiff stockholders seeking to challenge public company mergers. Assuming a transaction that is not subject to entire fairness review was approved …
The Delaware Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC, 125 A.3d 304 (Del. 2015) articulated a new defendant-friendly rule for post-closing damages actions for breaches of fiduciary duties. The Delaware Supreme Court held that where a …
In Larkin v. Shah, issued on August 25, the Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed a stockholder challenge to a merger due to the cleansing effect of fully informed stockholder approval, applying the Delaware Supreme Court’s recent Corwin v. KKR Financial …