Justia Delaware Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Ron Flowers and his co-defendant, Tariq Mariney, were indicted on charges of Drug Dealing, Aggravated Possession of Cocaine, Possession of a Firearm During the Commission of a Felony (“PFDCF”), Carrying a Concealed Deadly Weapon (“CCDW”), two counts each of Possession of a Firearm By a Person Prohibited (“PFBPP”) and Possession or Control of Ammunition By a Person Prohibited (“PABPP”), Receiving a Stolen Firearm, and Conspiracy Second Degree. Flowers moved to suppress evidence before trial, but in a bench ruling, the Superior Court denied his motion. A jury ultimately convicted Flowers of two counts of PFBPP as well as the CCDW charge, for which Flowers was sentenced to five years of incarceration followed by descending levels of supervision. On appeal, Flowers argued the Superior Court abused its discretion in denying his motion to suppress. Finding no reversible error nor abuse of discretion, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed Flowers' conviction. View "Flowers v. Delaware" on Justia Law

Gene Daskin, a Greek citizen residing in Greece, appealed two Delaware Family Court decisions finding subject matter jurisdiction over his wife's divorce petition and finding service of process on him was sufficient without requiring that service be properly made under the Hague Service Convention. The wife was a dual citizen of the United States and Greece. She was born in Wilmington and resided with her mother at her mother’s Wilmington home prior to the parties’ marriage. They married in Wilmington in 1990, and from then until November 2015, resided together in Greece. The husband contends that the time the wife has spent in Delaware since 2015 is temporary and for limited purposes. He contends she was not a resident of Delaware for the six months preceding the filing of her divorce petition. In his affidavit, the husband states that the wife pays taxes in Greece, has a Greek social security number, has a Greek identity card and has accounts in Greek banks. He also states that the wife continues to maintain a private marketing business out of their home in Greece. The husband’s position was that she was a resident of Greece, not Delaware. After review of the district court record, the Delaware Supreme Court determined the Family Court erred by dismissing the husband's motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction: service of process was insufficient. The matter was remanded for the Family Court to vacate the divorce decree and for further proceedings. View "Daskin v. Knowles" on Justia Law

Alan Fowler was present during two melees at which gun shots were fired, and bystanders were shot. Fowler was convicted on multiple crimes arising from the shootings. After Fowler’s trial and direct appeal were over, it emerged during post-conviction proceedings that the State had failed to provide "Jencks" statements to the defense of four of its key witnesses. In ruling on his post-conviction petition, the Superior Court held that the State had proved the error was harmless, largely based on the testimony of the State’s ballistics expert, Carl Rone, who said that the same gun was used in both incidents. When this case was on appeal, evidence emerged that the expert, who was not properly certified in the relevant area of firearms identification as of trial, was being charged by the State with Theft by False Pretense over $1,500 and Falsifying Business Records to Make or Cause False Entry for “providing false [Delaware State Police] activity sheets and receiving compensation from [Delaware State Police] for work that was not performed.” The State asked the Delaware Supreme Court to excuse the serious issues with its expert’s credibility in the Fowler case because of the compelling nature of testimony by witnesses, several of whose Jencks statements were not timely disclosed. The Supreme Court found that when the reliability of both strains of the key evidence the State used to prove Fowler was the shooter has been called into question, Rule 61 required setting aside the conviction. But rather than impose upon the Superior Court the burdensome step of conducting an evidentiary hearing under Rule 61 in these unusual circumstances, the Supreme Court vacated Fowler’s conviction and remanded for a new trial. View "Fowler v. Delaware" on Justia Law

A jury found Zamarianne Bradley guilty of first-degree assault of a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest. She appealed that conviction and the trial court’s ruling denying her motion for acquittal, arguing the evidence was insufficient for the jury to find that Bradley’s victim suffered the requisite “serious physical injury” for the First Degree Assault conviction, and that the jury instruction on that charge prevented the jury from intelligently performing its duties. Finding no reversible error, the Delaware Supreme Court denied Bradley’s requests on appeal and affirmed Bradley’s conviction. View "Bradley v. Delaware" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Amanda Norman appealed after a superior court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants All About Women, P.A. and Christine W. Maynard, M.D. in a medical negligence case. The grant of summary judgment followed an earlier ruling that the testimony of plaintiff's medical expert was inadmissible under the rules of evidence. In that ruling, the court excluded the expert’s testimony because the plaintiff failed to show that his opinions were “‘based on information reasonably relied upon by experts’ in his field.” Taking plaintiff's expert's deposition testimony as a whole, the Delaware Supreme Court found it sufficient to establish the applicable standards of care, Dr. Maynard's deviations from those standards, and injury to plaintiff caused by those deviations. As such, the Court ruled the expert's testimony admissible, reversed the superior court ruling, and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Norman v. All About Women, P.A., et al." on Justia Law

The Delaware Supreme Court granted review to an interlocutory appeal in a Family Court divorce proceeding. The wife, Gretchen Knowles, was a dual citizen of the United States and Greece. She was born in Wilmington and resided with her mother at her mother’s Wilmington home prior to the parties’ marriage. The respondent-husband, Gene Daskin, was a Greek citizen residing in Greece. The appeal came from the husband, raising two claims: (1) the Family Court erred in finding it had subject matter jurisdiction over the wife’s divorce petition because she was not a Delaware resident for six consecutive months prior to the filing of the petition; and (2) the Family Court erred in finding that service of process upon him was sufficient without requiring that service be properly made under the Hague Service Convention. After review, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of the Family Court denying the husband’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The Court reversed the denial of the husband’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction due to insufficiency of service of process. This matter was remanded to the Family Court to vacate the divorce decree, the trial Judge’s order of November 1, 2017 and the Commissioner’s order of August 8, 2017, and for further proceedings. View "Daskin v. Knowles" on Justia Law

In March 2016, soon after The Fresh Market (the “Company”) announced plans to go private, the Company publicly filed certain required disclosures under the federal securities laws. Given that the transaction involved a tender offer, the required disclosures included a Solicitation/Recommendation Statement on Schedule 14D-9 which articulated the Board’s reasons for recommending that stockholders accept the tender offer from an entity controlled by private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC (“Apollo”) for $28.5 in cash per share. Apollo publicly filed a Schedule TO, which included its own narrative of the background to the transaction. The 14D-9 incorporated Apollo’s Schedule TO by reference. After reading these disclosures, as the tender offer was still pending, plaintiff-stockholder Elizabeth Morrison suspected the Company’s directors had breached their fiduciary duties in the course of the sale process, and she sought Company books and records pursuant to Section 220 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. The Company denied her request, and the tender offer closed as scheduled on April 21 with 68.2% of outstanding shares validly tendered. This case calls into question the integrity of a stockholder vote purported to qualify for “cleansing” pursuant to Corwin v. KKR Fin. Holdings LLC, 125 A.3d 304 (Del. 2015). In reversing the Court of Chancery's judgment in favor of the Company, the Delaware Supreme Court held "'partial and elliptical disclosures' cannot facilitate the protection of the business judgment rule under the Corwin doctrine." View "Morrison, et al. v. Berry, et al." on Justia Law

Appellant Jamar Thompson challenged a Superior Court finding that he violated his probation. On appeal he argued: (1) his right to due process under Amendment XIV of the United States Constitution was violated because he was provided with an untimely and incomplete disclosure of the evidence against him, he was unavailable to testify, and a witness he intended to call was not permitted to testify; (2) the Superior Court violated his rights under Amendments IV and XIV of the United States Constitution and Article I section 6 of the Delaware Constitution by refusing to consider his argument, made at the hearing, that the evidence against him was the product of an unlawful search and seizure and should be suppressed; and (3) the evidence against him was insufficient to support a finding that he violated his probation. After considering Thompson’s claims, the Delaware Supreme Court found no reversible error and affirmed the Superior Court's judgment. View "Thompson v. Delaware" on Justia Law

In March 2016, soon after The Fresh Market (the “Company”) announced plans to go private, the Company publicly filed certain required disclosures under the federal securities laws. Given that the transaction involved a tender offer, the required disclosures included a Solicitation/Recommendation Statement on Schedule 14D-9 (together with amendments, the “14D-9”), which articulated the Board’s reasons for recommending that stockholders accept the tender offer—from an entity controlled by private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC (“Apollo”). The 14D-9 incorporated certain required schedules by reference. After reading these disclosures, as the tender offer was still pending, stockholder-plaintiff Elizabeth Morrison suspected the Company’s directors had breached their fiduciary duties in the course of the sale process, and she sought Company books and records pursuant to Section 220 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. The Company denied her request, and the tender offer closed as scheduled. Litigation over the Section 220 demand ensued, and Plaintiff obtained several key documents, such as board minutes and a crucial e-mail from Ray Berry’s counsel to the Company’s lawyers. Plaintiff then filed this action, including a breach of fiduciary duty claim against all ten of the Company’s directors, including Ray Berry, and a claim for aiding and abetting the breach against Ray Berry’s son, Brett Berry, who did not serve on the Board. The thrust of Plaintiff’s breach of fiduciary duty claim was that Ray and Brett Berry teamed up with Apollo to buy The Fresh Market at a discount by deceiving the Board and inducing the directors to put the Company up for sale through a process that “allowed the Berrys and Apollo to maintain an improper bidding advantage” and “predictably emerge[] as the sole bidder for Fresh Market” at a price below fair value. Plaintiff also alleged the Board and the stockholders were misled into believing that Ray Berry would openmindedly consider partnering with any private equity firm willing to outbid Apollo, but, instead, “[t]he reality of the situation was that Ray Berry (a) had already formed the belief that Apollo was uniquely well situated to buy Fresh Market; (b) had already entered into an undisclosed agreement with Apollo; and (c) was incentivized not to create price competition for Apollo.” In moving to dismiss, Defendants argued that Corwin v. KKR Fin. Holdings LLC, 125 A.3d 304, 312 (Del. 2015) applied. The Court of Chancery stated that this matter “presents an exemplary case of the utility of th[e] ratification doctrine, as set forth in Corwin and [In re Volcano Corp. S’holder Litig., 143 A.3d 727 (Del. Ch. 2016)].” The Delaware Supreme Court disagreed, finding defendants did not show under Corwin, that the vote was fully informed. Thus, “the business judgment rule is not invoked.” The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Chancery’s decision and remanded for further proceedings. View "Morrison, et al. v. Berry, et al." on Justia Law

This was a “take-home” asbestos case in which an employee’s now-deceased wife sued the companies who supplied asbestos products to her husband’s employer. Her husband’s employer caused him to work with those products, and the asbestos in them came home on his clothes. The wife’s theory of recovery against the asbestos product manufacturers was under section 388 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, an asbestos product manufacturer has a duty to warn foreseeable users of the dangers of its products, to the extent the asbestos product manufacturer has actual or constructive knowledge of that danger, and when it is unlikely that the user will discover the dangerous condition.2 The legal question underlying this appeal reduced to whether the spouse of an employee harmed by take-home asbestos exposure could sue an asbestos product manufacturer and recover if it failed to provide warnings and safe laundering instructions to her spouse’s employer, so he could protect himself or whoever laundered his clothes. "When applying section 388, the mundane realities of life make the spouses of employees who launder asbestos-covered clothes foreseeable plaintiffs to whom the manufacturers can be held liable. Taking into account, though, the argument that the asbestos product manufacturers are not in a position to warn employees directly, much less the other people who might launder employees’ clothes," the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant-manufacturers. "If, as the Manufacturers suggest, claims from plaintiffs with more momentary exposure to and tenuous relationship to an exposed employee are filed in the future, the answer is to address those cases then in a reasoned way that takes into account the practicalities that must inform our common law. But, the answer is not to ignore the equity due to the plaintiff before us, and the plaintiffs like her, who base their claims on a clearly foreseeable consequence of common, and necessary, human conduct: workers often have family members who launder their work clothes, and if those work clothes are covered in asbestos dust, those family members can suffer serious injury and even death." View "Ramsey v. Georgia Southern University Advanced Development Ctr" on Justia Law