
Understanding whether Delaware’s fee awards are exceptional has major implications for corporate litigation strategy and the cost of shareholder lawsuits nationwide. As Delaware remains the preeminent venue for corporate disputes, insights from this study help practitioners, investors, and policymakers gauge the fairness and predictability of fee awards, making the episode especially relevant amid ongoing debates about litigation reform.
Regular readers will recall that last November I started a series of posts on the debate over plaintiff attorneys’ fee awards in the Delaware Chancery Court. I got sidetracked in December by other developments and the holidays. But I’m now getting back to it, with three planned new posts (counting this one).
This time I’m taking up Is Delaware Different? Stockholder Lawyering in the Court of Chancery, by Stephen J. Choi, Jessica M. Erickson, and A.C. Pritchard.
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Choi, Erickson, and Pritchard (CEP) offer up a data-driven empirical study that—like the other studies we’ve reviewed—looks at fee awards in the Delaware Court of Chancery, focusing on whether Delaware is truly different from federal courts in how it handles such awards. In particular, they draw attention not just to the size of fee awards but the process by which those awards are set to test whether Delaware really is unique.
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