A recent Delaware Court of Chancery ruling in Wagner v. Tesla, Inc., C.A. No. 2021-1090-JTL, transcript ruling (Del. Ch. Jan. 19, 2022), has sharpened the “tools at hand” that the Delaware courts have long exhorted corporate litigators to use before filing a plenary lawsuit–namely, DGCL § 220, which is the basis for the right of stockholders to sue for corporate records.

Readers of these pages since the 2005 launch of this blog will be forgiven if they have grown weary of the multitude of Delaware decisions on DGCL § 220 highlighted on these pages, chronicling the often long-suffering stockholders who attempt to use the frequently blunt tools at hand.

But the recent Chancery ruling in Wagner v. Tesla, Inc. provides hope to those who would like § 220 to be a sharper tool for seeking corporate records than it sometimes seems to be.

There are four especially noteworthy takeaways in this gem of a transcript ruling, in the context of a decision on a motion to expedite:

  • A reminder that § 220 complaints should be given a trial date within 90 days of the complaint being filed. The court eschews dispositive motions and other procedural obstacles to a quick trial date.  A trial date in this case was provided in about 90 days or so from the filing of the complaint, despite protestations by the company, addressed below.

 

  • The court explained that it was a mistake for companies to defend § 220 cases on the merits of a potential underlying claim for several reasons, including that a stockholder does not need to demonstrate an “actionable claim”–but rather only needs to demonstrate a credible basis. See generally AmerisourceBergen Supreme Court decision highlighted on these pages.

 

  • Because a stockholder only needs to show a credible basis and does not need to prove that it has an actionable claim, if a company does not want to “air dirty laundry” then they should not defend § 220 cases by addressing the merits of a potential underlying claim that might be brought in a later plenary action. Likewise, it was no defense in this case to seeking a trial in 90 days that the company had a federal securities trial scheduled across the country during a similar time period because a § 220 case should not be viewed as having any material impact on a plenary trial on actionable claims.[1]

 

  • A defense that the court did not squarely address, but did not allow to be used as a bar to holding a prompt § 220 trial, was that the plaintiff in this case only held “fractional shares,” although the court did provide some dicta on that issue. See generally In re Camping World Holdings, Inc. Stockholder Derivative Litigation, C.A. No. 2019-0179 (consol.), memo op. (Del. Ch. Jan. 31, 2022)(An unrelated § 220 case also considering a motion to expedite, but deferring ruling on the argument that the plaintiff lacks standing because he only owned a fractional share of stock.)

[1] The court noted that at the time of the hearing on the motion to expedite in this case, Tesla had the largest market cap in the world and had capable lawyers to handle litigation of both cases with trials in close proximity to each other.

Supplement: A few hours after this post was written, I received in the mail a law review article that discussed the consequential Section 220 decision in Woods v. Sahara Enterprises, Inc., highlighted on these pages, and the author of that article kindly quoted from my blog post on that Sahara case. See Clifford R. Wood, Jr., Note, Knowing your Rights: Stockholder Demands to Inspect Corporate Books and Records Following Woods v. Sahara Enterprises, Inc., 46 Del. J. Corp L. 45, 52 (2021)The same article also cited to a law review article I co-wrote on Section 220. Id. at 46.