The Delaware Court of Chancery has recently issued an opinion denying a “disclosure only” settlement, in the case of In Re Trulia Inc. Stockholder Litigation, C.A. No. 10020-CB (Del. Ch. Jan. 22, 2016). This case is significant in that it reflects the Court’s strong reluctance to approve these types of settlements.
This opinion concerns the proposed settlement of a stockholder class action challenging Zillow, Inc.’s acquisition of Trulia, Inc. in a stock-for-stock merger that closed in February 2015. Several Trulia stockholders filed similar complaints alleging that Trulia’s directors had breached their fiduciary duties in approving the proposed merger at an unfair exchange ratio. Less than four months later, after taking limited discovery, the parties reached an agreement-in-principle to settle.
The proposed settlement was a “disclosure only” settlement, in which supplemental disclosures are exchanged for broad releases provided to company management. The Court found that “the terms of this proposed settlement are not fair or reasonable because none of the supplemental disclosures were material or even helpful to Trulia’s stockholders, and thus the proposed settlement does not afford them any meaningful consideration to warrant providing a release of claims to the defendants.”
As aptly stated by Chancellor Bouchard:
Given the rapid proliferation and current ubiquity of deal litigation, the mounting evidence that supplemental disclosures rarely yield genuine benefits for stockholders, the risk of stockholders losing potentially valuable claims that have not been investigated with rigor, and the challenges of assessing disclosure claims in a non-adversarial settlement process, the Court’s historical predisposition toward approving disclosure settlements needs to be reexamined. In the Court’s opinion, the optimal means by which disclosure claims in deal litigation should be adjudicated is outside the context of a proposed settlement so that the Court’s consideration of the merits of the disclosure claims can occur in an adversarial process where the defendants’ desire to obtain a release does not hang in the balance.
Stay tuned for further updates on Court review of disclosure only settlements.
If you would like to speak to a litigator in Fox Rothschild’s Delaware office, please reach out to Sid Liebesman (302) 622-4237 or Seth Niederman (302) 622-4238.