Litigation-limiting constitutive documents – off to the California Supreme Court

Looking back, it’s funny how the issue of litigation limits in corporate constitutive documents has really been a throughline throughout my academic career; my first paper on the subject, Manufactured Consent: The Problem of Arbitration Clauses in Corporate Charters and Bylaws, was written when I was still a VAP.  So now it’s like a theme.

Anyhoo, as you all know, the latest set of developments occurred when the Delaware Supreme Court decided Salzberg v. Sciabacucchi, 227 A.3d 102 (Del. 2020), and approved the use of litigation limiting bylaws and charter provisions even for non Delaware claims, specifically, federal securities and antitrust claims.

That was part of what inspired my latest paper on the subject, Inside Out (or, One State to Rule them All): New Challenges to the Internal Affairs Doctrine, arguing, among other things, that other states pay too much deference to Delaware by automatically treating these provisions as contracts governed by Delaware law, rather than asking which law to apply, and whether the elements of contract are met.

Well, a new case has come up, EpicentRx, Inc. v. Superior Court, 95 Cal.App.5th 890.

EpicentRx is private, organized in Delaware but headquartered in California.  Its charter and bylaws require that shareholder claims be filed in Delaware Chancery.  Well, one shareholder is suing, not only for breach of fiduciary duty under Delaware law, but also for fraud under California law.  In EpicentRx, Inc. v. Superior Court, the California appellate court held that the corporate constitutive documents are, in fact, a contract – governed by the internal affairs doctrine, which, by the way, is not what Salzberg held, there was a diagram and everything – but that in this case, a trial in Delaware Chancery would require the shareholder to forfeit its jury rights under California law, and therefore the contract is unenforceable.  (Yes, that’s an issue I mention briefly in my paper, by the way)

The California Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case, Epicentrx, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2023 Cal. LEXIS 6991 (Cal., Dec. 13, 2023).

Now, I gather that a lot of the action will be about whether the particular claims advanced by the plaintiff are, in fact, jury claims under California law.  But I desperately hope the California Supreme Court will spend some time asking whether there’s even a contract here in the first place, including which state’s law applies (since, I say again, Delaware did not hold this question was governed by the internal affairs doctrine).  Now, since EpicentRx is private, these may be more difficult questions than in the context of publicly traded corporations.  The plaintiff presumably bought stock directly from the company, for all I know the investment contract incorporated the bylaw and charter provisions by reference, although – and I think this is key – one factor that makes constitutive documents noncontractual is that, as Boilermakers Local 154 Retirement Fund v. Chevron Corp., 73 A.3d 934 (Del. Ch. 2013) recognized, Delaware managers are subject to fiduciary duties when they enforce them, and I don’t even know how you ask whether it’s a violation of fiduciary duty to enforce a bylaw that causes a shareholder to forfeit a jury right.  In any event, all I really want is for the California Supreme Court to take these questions seriously.