IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v19y2017i2p287-326..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Shareholder Wealth Effects of Delaware Litigation

Author

Listed:
  • Adam B. Badawi
  • Daniel L. Chen

Abstract

We collect data on the record of every action in hundreds of derivative cases and merger class actions involving public companies filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery from 2004 to 2011. We use these data to analyze how markets respond to litigation in the most important court for corporate disputes in the United States. The detail in the dataset allows us to explore how case characteristics such as the timing of the filing, the presence of certain procedural motions, litigation intensity, and the judge assigned to the case relate to firm value. Unlike previous studies, we document that negative abnormal returns are associated with the filing of derivative cases, and we show that this association is particularly strong for cases that are first filed in Delaware and are not related to a previously disclosed government investigation. We also develop some evidence that market participants can anticipate litigation intensity and respond by valuing the firm equity less and that markets associate cases with pension fund plaintiffs with better outcomes than cases without this institutional involvement. Finally, we find little evidence of abnormal returns associated with judicial assignment at the time of filing for derivative cases, but we do observe an association between judicial assignment and case filing for merger cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam B. Badawi & Daniel L. Chen, 2017. "The Shareholder Wealth Effects of Delaware Litigation," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 19(2), pages 287-326.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:19:y:2017:i:2:p:287-326.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahx015
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce Haslem, 2005. "Managerial Opportunism during Corporate Litigation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 2013-2041, August.
    2. Mark Mitchell & Todd Pulvino, 2001. "Characteristics of Risk and Return in Risk Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2135-2175, December.
    3. Marcel Kahan, 2006. "The Demand for Corporate Law: Statutory Flexibility, Judicial Quality, or Takeover Protection?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 340-365, October.
    4. Jindra, Jan & Walkling, Ralph A., 2004. "Speculation spreads and the market pricing of proposed acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 495-526, September.
    5. A. Belloni & D. Chen & V. Chernozhukov & C. Hansen, 2012. "Sparse Models and Methods for Optimal Instruments With an Application to Eminent Domain," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2369-2429, November.
    6. Baker, Malcolm & Savasoglu, Serkan, 2002. "Limited arbitrage in mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 91-115, April.
    7. Daines, Robert, 2001. "Does Delaware law improve firm value?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 525-558, December.
    8. Sanjai Bhagat & John Bizjak & Jeffrey L. Coles, 1998. "The Shareholder Wealth Implications of Corporate Lawsuits," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 27(4), Winter.
    9. Romano, Roberta, 1991. "The Shareholder Suit: Litigation without Foundation?," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 55-87, Spring.
    10. Shahrur, Husayn, 2005. "Industry structure and horizontal takeovers: Analysis of wealth effects on rivals, suppliers, and corporate customers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 61-98, April.
    11. Dutordoir, Marie & Van de Gucht, Linda, 2007. "Are there windows of opportunity for convertible debt issuance? Evidence for Western Europe," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 2828-2846, September.
    12. Sanjai Bhagat & Roberta Romano, 2002. "Event Studies and the Law: Part II: Empirical Studies of Corporate Law," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 4(2), pages 380-423.
    13. Daniel L. Chen, 2015. "Can markets stimulate rights? On the alienability of legal claims," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(1), pages 23-65, March.
    14. Sanjai Bhagat & Roberta Romano, "undated". "Event Studies and the Law: Part II--Empirical Studies and Corporate Law," Yale Law School John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy Working Paper Series yale_lepp-1019, Yale Law School John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.
    15. Sanjai Bhagat & Roberta Romano, 2001. "Event Studies and the Law: Part II - Empirical Studies of Corporate Law," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2453, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Sep 2002.
    16. West, Mark D, 2001. "Why Shareholders Sue: The Evidence from Japan," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 351-382, Part I Ju.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yang Xu & Vincent Jia & Xinze Qian & Haizhi Wang & Xiaotian Zhang, 2024. "Delaware Reincorporation and the Double-Exit Puzzle: Evidence from Post-Initial Public Offering Acquisitions," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-15, April.
    2. Yongqiang Chu & Yijia (Eddie) Zhao, 2021. "The dark side of shareholder litigation: Evidence from corporate takeovers," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(3), pages 845-873, September.
    3. Yiwei Li & Wei Song & Tingyu Sun & Qingjing Zhang, 2023. "The impact of shareholder litigation risk on income smoothing," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(4), pages 1379-1413, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sergey Stepanov, 2010. "Shareholder access to manager‐biased courts and the monitoring/litigation trade‐off," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(2), pages 270-300, June.
    2. Wei, Zuobao & Xie, Feixue & Posthuma, Richard A., 2011. "Does it pay to pollute? Shareholder wealth consequences of corporate environmental lawsuits," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 212-218, September.
    3. Yongqiang Chu & Yijia (Eddie) Zhao, 2021. "The dark side of shareholder litigation: Evidence from corporate takeovers," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(3), pages 845-873, September.
    4. Sokolyk, Tatyana, 2011. "The effects of antitakeover provisions on acquisition targets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 612-627, June.
    5. Anant K. Sundaram & Andrew C. Inkpen, 2004. "The Corporate Objective Revisited," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(3), pages 350-363, June.
    6. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Cohen, Alma, 2003. "Firms' Decisions Where to Incorporate," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 383-425, October.
    7. Malm, James & Adhikari, Hari P. & Krolikowski, Marcin W. & Sah, Nilesh B., 2021. "The old guard: CEO age and corporate litigation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    8. Daniel Martin Katz & Michael J Bommarito II & Tyler Soellinger & James Ming Chen, 2015. "Law on the Market? Abnormal Stock Returns and Supreme Court Decision-Making," Papers 1508.05751, arXiv.org, revised May 2017.
    9. Yiwei Li & Wei Song & Tingyu Sun & Qingjing Zhang, 2023. "The impact of shareholder litigation risk on income smoothing," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(4), pages 1379-1413, November.
    10. Chu, Yongqiang, 2017. "Shareholder litigation, shareholder–creditor conflict, and the cost of bank loans," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 318-332.
    11. Chung, Chune Young & Kim, Incheol & Rabarison, Monika K. & To, Thomas Y. & Wu, Eliza, 2020. "Shareholder litigation rights and corporate acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    12. Omer Unsal & M. Kabir Hassan, 2020. "Employee lawsuits and capital structure," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 663-704, June.
    13. Utpal Bhattacharya & Neal Galpin & Bruce Haslem, 2007. "The Home Court Advantage in International Corporate Litigation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(4), pages 625-660.
    14. Cremers, K. J. Martijn & Litov, Lubomir P. & Sepe, Simone M., 2013. "Staggered Boards and Firm Value, Revisited," Working Papers 13-36, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    15. Gokhale, Jayendra & Brooks, Raymond M. & Tremblay, Victor J., 2014. "The effect on stockholder wealth of product recalls and government action: The case of Toyota's accelerator pedal recall," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 521-528.
    16. Chemmanur, Thomas J. & Jordan, Bradford D. & Liu, Mark H. & Wu, Qun, 2010. "Antitakeover provisions in corporate spin-offs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 813-824, April.
    17. Arena, Matteo P. & Ferris, Stephen P., 2018. "A global analysis of corporate litigation risk and costs," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 28-41.
    18. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Cummins, J. David & Lewis, Christopher M. & Wei, Ran, 2004. "An empirical analysis of the economic impact of federal terrorism reinsurance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(5), pages 861-898, July.
    19. Arouri, Mohamed & Gomes, Mathieu & Pukthuanthong, Kuntara, 2019. "Corporate social responsibility and M&A uncertainty," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 176-198.
    20. Muravyev, Alexander, 2009. "Investor Protection and the Value of Shares: Evidence from Statutory Rules Governing Variations of Shareholders' Class Rights in Russia," IZA Discussion Papers 4669, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:19:y:2017:i:2:p:287-326.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.