New areas of the law usually undergo an evolutionary process, and that is clearly the case with regard to the rights of creditors and the duties owed by the management of companies to which they lend money.

In 1991, in Credit Lyonnais Bank v. Pathe Comm. Corp., the Delaware Court of Chancery held that directors did not breach their fiduciary duties by considering the interests of creditors (as opposed to just stockholders) when making decisions.

For 15 years thereafter, federal bankruptcy courts, supposedly applying Delaware law and citing Credit Lyonnais, held that directors actually owe fiduciary duties to creditors when making decisions while the corporation is insolvent or in the zone of insolvency. In 2007, the Delaware Supreme Court put an end to these holdings in North American Catholic Educational Programming, Inc. v. Gheewalla—though some bankruptcy courts now misinterpret Gheewalla.