Justia Corporate Compliance Opinion Summaries

Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. (Enron) sought to avoid and recover payments it made to redeem its commercial paper prior to maturity from appellees, whose notes were redeemed by Enron. On appeal, Enron challenged the district court's conclusion that 11 U.S.C. 546(e)'s safe harbor, which shielded "settlement payments" from avoidance actions in bankruptcy, protected Enron's redemption payments whether or not they were made to retire debt or were unusual. The court affirmed the district court's decision and order, holding that Enron's proposed exclusions from the reach of section 546(e) have no basis in the Bankruptcy Code where the payments at issue were made to redeem commercial paper, which the Bankruptcy Code defined as security. Therefore, the payments at issue constituted the "transfer of cash ... made to complete [a] securities transaction" and were settlement payments within the meaning of 11 U.S.C. 741(8). The court declined to address Enron's arguments regarding legislative history because the court reached its conclusion based on the statute's plain language.

Plaintiff sued defendants under RICO, 18 U.S.C. 1961-1968, principally alleging injury to plaintiff's business by reason of defendants' establishment of a competing commercial enterprise through the investment of income derived from a pattern of racketeering activity. At issue was whether the district court properly granted defendants' motions for summary judgment on the pleadings and, in the alternative, for summary judgment on the grounds that plaintiff's complaint and the record were insufficient to show that any injury to plaintiff's business was proximately caused by defendants' alleged violation of section 1962(a). The court held that to the extent that plaintiff claimed injury from defendants' continuation in its Bronx store of the cash-no-tax scheme conducted in the Queens store, that claim appeared to be conceptually indistinguishable from the section 1962(c) claim previously rejected by the Supreme Court. The court held that to the extent, however, that plaintiff claimed that it lost sales to defendants because defendants invested the proceeds of their pattern of racketeering activity to establish and operate defendants' new store in the Bronx, the court rejected defendants' contentions and concluded that the district court erred in granting summary judgment on the pleadings on the basis of Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and erred in granting summary judgment.

This action was before the court on a motion to expedite regarding a transaction in which a Delaware limited partnership was to be acquired for either cash or a combination of cash and the acquirer's stock. Plaintiff-unitholders of the target claim that the process undertaken by the conflicts committee was deficient and therefore, legally ineffective because it failed to consider the fairness of payments made to certain conflicted parties and the independence of the conflicts committee members was tainted by a grant of unvested phantom units they received shortly before merger discussion began. Plaintiffs also contended that the directors failed to provide adequate disclosures to enable the unitholders to make an informed decision as to whether to vote for the transaction. Plaintiffs also asserted that they will suffer irreparable harm if prompt equitable relief was not granted because the general partner of the target was controlled by three allegedly single-purpose entities whose sole assets were their interests in the general partner. As a result, plaintiffs asserted that these entities would become empty shells unless they were prevented from distributing the consideration they received in the transaction. The court held that plaintiffs have shown that at least one of their claims was colorable but plaintiffs' allegations were simply to speculative to support the required showing of irreparable harm. Accordingly, the court denied plaintiffs' motion to expedite.

The SEC brought suit against senior officers of Gateway Incorporated ("Gateway") claiming that they unlawfully misrepresented Gateway's financial condition in the third quarter of 2000 in order to meet financial analysts' earnings and revenue expectations. After a three week trial, a jury found former Gateway financial executives, John J. Todd and Robert D. Manza, liable on all claims by the SEC. All parties appealed the district court's order in part. The court reversed the district court's order granting in part Todd's and Manza's motions for judgment as a matter of law on the antifraud claims under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. 78a et seq., because substantial evidence supported the jury's verdict that Todd and Manza at least recklessly misrepresented revenue related to the Lockheed transaction, and that Todd recklessly misrepresented revenue as to the VenServ transaction, in the third quarter of 2000. The court also reversed the district court's order granting Jeffrey Weitzen's, former Gateway President and CEO, motion for summary judgment as to the Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 violations because there were genuine issues of material fact regarding whether Weitzen knowingly misrepresented Gateway's financial growth as "accelerated" given his knowledge of the unusual Lockheed and AOL transactions. There were also issues of material fact as to whether Weitzen was a "control person" under Section 20(a). The court affirmed Weitzen's motion for summary judgment as to the Rule 13b2-2 claim because there was no evidence that Weitzen signed a letter to Gateway's auditors knowing that it misrepresented Gateway's financial position. The court also affirmed the district court's order denying in part Todd's and Manza's motions for judgment as a matter of law on the aiding and abetting claims and their motions for a new trial.

Appellants in this derivative action, who are shareholders of Primedia, Inc., appealed the Court of Chancery's decision granting the Primedia Special Litigation Committee's ("SLC") Motion to Dismiss claims arising out of a series of alleged violations of fiduciary duty by defendants. As a preliminary matter, the court invoked the exception to mootness doctrine in this case because it was a matter of public importance that was capable of repetition yet could evade review where other litigants have raised the Brophy v. Cities Co. issue in actions now pending before the Court of Chancery. The court held that Brophy did not require an element of harm to the corporation before disgorgement was an available remedy and to the extent Pfeiffer v. Toll conflicted with this holding, it was wrong. In Brophy, the court relied on the principles of restitution and equity and as the Brophy court recognized, it was inequitable to permit the fiduciary to profit from using confidential corporate information. The court also held that the Vice Chancellor's analysis of the SLC's Motion to Dismiss under Zapata Corp. v. Maldonado's second prong could not be affirmed in the shadow of Pfeiffer's incorrect holding. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Chancery was reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.

Plaintiffs, limited partners of Cencom Cable Income Partnership, L.P. ("Partnership"), sued defendants over the appraisal and sale of nine cable systems. In this post-trial memorandum opinion, the court addressed not only the import of the disclosures that a certain law firm, which had been retained to assure that plaintiffs' rights would be protected, had been retained to assure that the process would be "fair" to plaintiffs, but also plaintiffs' other challenges, including primarily whether the general partner manipulated to its benefit the process by which the partnership assets were valued and sold and whether approval by the limited partners of the sales process, which established a price and provided for interest on that amount following a date certain until distribution of the sales proceeds, acted to deprive plaintiffs of the right to any quarterly distributions following the start of the period during which interest would be paid. The court held that the appraisal and sale process did not deny plaintiffs the benefit of their bargain. Under the circumstances, it was fair and, to the extent that certain obligations were not precisely met, plaintiffs were not damaged. Accordingly, the court held that defendants were entitled to the entry of judgment in their favor and the dismissal of the action.

Plaintiffs, stockholders in Massey Energy Company ("Massey"), a coal mining corporation with a controversial reputation, sought a preliminary injunction against a Merger Agreement with a mining company, with a good reputation and track record for miner safety and regulatory compliance, because the Massey Board did not negotiate to have the pending "Derivative Claims" transferred into a litigation trust for the exclusive benefit of Massey stockholders. The court held that plaintiffs had not proven that the Merger's consummation presented them with a threat of irreparable harm and therefore, denied plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction.

Plaintiff, a significant stockholder in a holding company managed by the individual defendants, alleged, both on behalf of a class and derivatively, breaches of fiduciary duty regarding defendants' adoption of a stock buyback plan, their adoption of an options plan, issuance of the options to themselves, and the decision by the company to vote in favor of a transaction involving the sale of a subsidiary's interest in a third entity. At issue was whether the court should grant defendants' motion to dismiss pursuant to Court of Chancery Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. The court denied defendants' motion to dismiss Count II only with regard to the claim that defendants' vote of Winmill & Co. Incorporated's ("Winmill") interest in Bexil Corporation in favor of the York Insurance Services Group, Inc. sale was self-interested and unfair to Winmill. The court otherwise granted defendants' motion to dismiss.

The under seal appellant ("Company 1"), a foreign company, appealed the district court's denial of its motion to quash the government's grand-jury subpoenas served on the under seal intervenor ("Company 2") where the subpoenas sought documents that Company 1 delivered to Company 2 in response to discovery requests that arose during the course of civil litigation between the two companies in district court. The court affirmed the denial of Company 1's motion to quash the government's subpoenas and held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that the subpoenas passed muster under Rule 17 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and Company 1 provided no basis for the court to craft a new procedural rule in support of its position. The court also held that there were no clearly erroneous rulings by the district court in resolving the factual issue regarding the nature of Company 2's interaction with the government and Company 1 failed to show that the issue merited any further investigation or an evidentiary hearing. The court rejected Company 1's remaining arguments and affirmed the district court's denial of Company 1's motion to quash.

Cobb Electric Membership Corporation ("Cobb EMC") members filed a derivative action against Cobb EMC and the parties subsequently entered into a settlement agreement. At issue was whether the Court of Appeals erred by failing to defer to the trial court's determination that Cobb EMC's Board of Directors ("Board") was authorized to adopt the proxy voting bylaw agreement. Also at issue was whether the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the use of the proxy voting pursuant to the Board's bylaw amendment violated the provision of the settlement agreement. The court held that although the Court of Appeals mischaracterized the nature of the issue on appeal, it did utilize the correct standard for reviewing the trial court's legal conclusions, i.e., de novo review. The court also held that while it agreed with the conclusion that the Board's proxy voting bylaw amendment violated the terms of the settlement agreement, the Court of Appeal's reasoning was not the basis upon which the court's conclusion rested. The court held, nevertheless, that the Board's proxy voting bylaw amendment violated the trial court order approving the settlement agreement because it significantly changed the conditions under the parties' agreed-upon plan for proposing the option of proxy voting. The court finally held that, because the trial court's May 2009 order did not address the "full cooperation" requirement of its previous order, the Court of Appeals erred in considering the issue. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed in part and reversed in part.