Exclusive forum provisions in corporate bylaws and certificates of incorporation are back on the agenda for many companies. We reviewed the trend data in a June 2012 briefing and predicted that few companies would adopt exclusive forum provisions until there was guidance from then-pending litigation in the Delaware Court of Chancery. That guidance came this past June in the form of Chancellor Strine’s decision upholding the validity of board-adopted exclusive forum bylaw provisions at Chevron and FedEx. Most recently the plaintiffs in that litigation dropped their appeal, so for now Chancellor Strine’s decision stands in support of the proposition that, unsurprisingly, Delaware views the selection of a Delaware forum as at least facially valid.
In the wake of these developments the adoption of exclusive forum provisions has resumed, and by our count there are now about 120 companies, largely but not exclusively Delaware corporations, that have gotten on board since the Chevron decision. While these are still small numbers in the context of several thousand U.S. public companies, we expect the number to continue to grow in the coming months.
