Last month, when I noted in a post that the parties to the FirstEnergy bribery-related derivative litigation had agreed to settle the suits for a payment of $180 million and the company’s agreement to adopt certain governance reforms, I added what I thought at the time was the pro forma observation that the settlement was subject to court approval. The court processes that have followed have been anything but pro forma. As it has turned out, Northern District of Ohio Judge John R. Adams has thrown a huge money-wrench into the works, refusing even to stay the case pending in his court, demanding that plaintiffs’ counsel reveal the names of the individuals that actually paid the supposed bribes, and directing the parties to conduct depositions in the case – a case that the parties have already agreed to settle. The story of the unfolding of these events is well told in two recent posts on Alison Frankel’s On the Case blog, here and here.
Continue Reading The Parties Agreed to a Settlement. Then Things Got Weird.