There is much agitation over multiforum litigation. Both the typical defendants in such cases, corporations involved in a merger, and the courts decry what they see as duplicative suits over the same dispute in two or more jurisdictions. The past legal rules that might have resolved the issue of what case goes forward no longer seem to work. The Delaware Court of Chancery is now moving forward to develop new approaches to resolve the problems presented by multiforum litigation over the same basic dispute.
As is now well-known, in Boilermakers Local 154 Retirement Fund v. Chevron, C.A. No. 7220 (Del. Ch. June 25, 2013), the Court of Chancery upheld a corporate bylaw that mandated internal corporate disputes be litigated in Delaware. If courts outside of Delaware respect the Boilermakers decision, that will severely limit multijurisdiction litigation over those internal corporate disputes. But, what about other disputes where Delaware cannot rely on the primacy of its corporate law to justify requiring litigation involving that law be brought only in Delaware?
