The recent discovery that corporate law litigation very often takes place in courts outside of Delaware has rattled the academic consensus that Delaware won the corporate law “race” by providing a well-managed forum staffed with expert judges willing to decide complex deal cases quickly. In an apparent affront to this settled understanding, recent research shows that more cases are filed against Delaware corporations in other states than in Delaware itself. [1] As a forum for corporate litigation, in other words, Delaware no longer dominates.

Shaken from their settled understandings, commentators have sounded the alarm that fewer cases decided in Delaware could, over time, reduce the expertise of the Delaware judiciary in corporate law matters. Worse, the decisions reached by non-Delaware “dilettantes” threaten to adulterate and degrade the basic Delaware product. In sum, prior commentary on the out-of-Delaware trend has treated it as very bad for corporate defendants, very bad for shareholder plaintiffs, and very bad for Delaware.

…continue reading: Multi-Forum Merger Litigation and the “Market for Preclusion”