It turns out that while the Innkeepers litigation was chugging along in federal court in New York, another very similar dispute was being heard in Delaware Chancery Court over Skyworks Solutions Inc.’s apparent decision to scuttle a $258.6 million deal to buy rival tech firm Advanced Analogic Technologies. But while the lawyers for Cerberus and Innkeepers were duking it out in public, AAT’s Delaware case against Skyworks was kept almost completely under wraps, thanks to rules adopted last year allowing the chancery court to arbitrate confidential disputes.
Now a Delaware non-profit is demanding that the new provisions be thrown out and that litigants like AAT be forced to air their grievances publicly or turn to traditional private arbitrations. On Tuesday the Delaware Coalition for Open Government sued the Delaware Chancery Court and all five of its judges to open the court’s arbitration proceedings to the public, arguing that the confidential arbitration rules are unconstitutional. Here’s the 5-page Delaware federal district court complaint, filed by David Finger of Wilmington’s Finger & Slanina.
