City of Providence v. First Citizens BancShares Inc., et al., No. 9795, 2014 WL 4409816 (Del. Ch. Sept. 8, 2014).
The Delaware Court of Chancery upheld the forum selection clause of the bylaws of a Delaware corporation that requires most shareholder suits against the company to be filed in North Carolina, where the company’s main office is located. This is a natural evolution of the prior Chancery decision in the Chevron decision, highlighted on these pages.
N.B. This decision was later superseded by a change in the Delaware statute.
Supplement: Many posts on this topic have appeared on these pages. Ted Mirvis writes on the Harvard Corporate Governance Blog about a recent federal decision that upheld a Delaware forum selection bylaw and which provides useful reasoning that may have broader application in similar cases.