Legal News

A Lamb Lies Down at Paul Weiss

By Ashby Jones

Following other non-native firms that have recently opened offices in Wilmington, Del., New York litigation juggernaut Paul Weiss has announced it too will set up shop in the First State. Stephen Lamb, a judge on the Delaware Court of Chancery, will join the firm and help it open the office. Click here for the WSJ story.

Over the years, firms have made the move to Delaware in order to be close to the action at the Delaware Court of Chancery, one of the leading courts in the nation on corporate and business law, as well as the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, a forum of choice for a lot of corporate Chapter 11 filers.

With Lamb, Paul Weiss is getting a well-respected jurist from the high-profile court. A vice chancellor on the Delaware court since 1997, the 60-year-old Mr. Lamb, a registered Republican, presided over many closely watched cases. Observers say he sometimes took a more conservative tack that favored corporate management in their defense of lawsuits by shareholders.

“He’s conservative, yes,” says Elizabeth Nowicki, a corporate law professor at Tulane University Law School. “But I’m pro-investor and I’ve always been impressed with how careful he is to independently approach each case without being attached to a certain dogma.”

Lamb made a bit of a splash last year when he ruled that Hexion, a chemical company owned by private-equity firm Apollo Management LP, intentionally breached a $6.5 billion merger agreement with a rival, Huntsman Corp., to escape closing the deal, and that it should honor its obligations under the deal. Click here for a LB post on Lamb’s decision.

The ruling led to a settlement in which Apollo Management, after nixing the merger, agreed to pay about $1 billion to Huntsman.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 29, 2009 (boomark / email).