Defendant, via a counterclaim, sought damages as a result of a concluded merger involving a Delaware LLC. The Court held that the decision whether to merge belonged to the Management Committee of the LLC, and that it would review that decision pursuant to the Business Judgment Rule.
Defendant contended that company insiders "stood on both sides of the deal," and they were therefore conflicted in their ability to properly approve this merger. The Court rejected this contention. It held that "the mere presence of managers on both sides of a merger does not mean the transaction must fail due to a conflict of interest." The Court observed that the 95% of the company’s shareholders had approved the merger, and that Delaware courts "have made clear that such a ‘fully informed vote of stockholders approving a merger will extinguish a claim for breach of fiduciary duty.’"
The remainder of the Court’s opinion dealt with defendant’s Motion to Compel, which sought information regarding the details of plaintiff’s contracts with its teachers with whom it did business. The Court discussed the broad scope of relevancy, and the distinction between relevance for discovery purposes and relevancy at trial, and denied the Motion. It found that the information sought was not relevant, and that it involved confidential business information and information potentially subject to attorney-client privilege.