The Delaware Court of Chancery recently addressed a common type of claim in commercial litigation: Post-closing adjustments to the purchase price. Sparton Corporation v. O’Neil, C.A. No. 12403-VCMR (Del. Ch. Aug. 9, 2017).

Basic Facts: The claims in this case involved an assertion that the defendant directors changed the selling company’s accounts receivable after an amount was determined for an escrow account for post-closing adjustments–but the change was made prior to the closing, unbeknownst to the buyers. In essence, the court found that the allegations of fraud did not satisfy the prerequisites for specificity, and, in addition, a robust anti-reliance clause prevented claims based on representations outside the contract.

Key Takeaways

Anti-Reliance Provision and Fraud Claims

The most noteworthy statement of law from this decision, that has the most widespread application, is based on the strong anti-reliance provision in the agreement, and settled Delaware law that prevented claims based on misrepresentations outside the four corners of the agreement. The anti-reliance clause was quoted at length in the opinion and was very specific to the extent that the parties agreed that the sole and exclusive representations were those contained in the  agreement and that no representations outside the agreement were relied upon in connection with the purchase. (See footnote 44 which cited to the well-known Abry case on which the court’s reasoning was based.)

In addition, the court relied on the basic pleading prerequisites for fraud which require much more specificity than non-fraud claims require. In addition, the court distinguished the Osram case which noted that “a mere allegation that a defendant knew or should have known about a false statement is not sufficient to plead the requisite state of mind” for fraud.The court reasoned that in this case, none of the defendants personally represented the accuracy of the financial statements, and that they were not a position to know the veracity of the statements. Also, the plaintiff did not plead any particularized facts about the roles of the defendant in the company or the relationships of the defendants with management. Nor did the plaintiffs allege any facts to show that the defendants would be a position to know that the documents were falsely prepared.

Commercially Reasonable Efforts

Also noteworthy is the court’s treatment of a claim that “commercially reasonable efforts,” as required by the agreement, were not employed. The case law on the “commercially reasonable efforts standard” has been written about on these pages in connection with recent decisions, but because case law about that contractual standard is not fully evolved, I mention it here in passing even though the court’s discussion is not comprehensive. See Slip op. at page 15.The allegation was that it should have been self-evident that because certain actions did not take place by a certain deadline in the agreement, that the reason must have been the lack of an exercise of commercially reasonable efforts. The court rejected this conclusory allegation because it was not self-sufficient and did not satisfy the “reasonably conceivable test” under Rule 12(b)(6).