It was inevitable that News Corp would be plagued by shareholder litigation after the hacking scandal that rocked the company two years ago. The ensuing jurisdictional battle was predicable too, with separate groups of plaintiffs lawyers in Delaware and New York pressing more-or-less parallel claims that News Corp’s board botched internal controls at the company. A forum fight looked even more likely last September, when a federal judge refused to stay the New York cases in favor of the Delaware litigation.
The surprise about April 22′s record-breaking $139 million cash settlement in the Delaware suitthe biggest ever in a derivative caseis that the jurisdictional tug-of-war seems to have been so easily resolved. According to a joint memorandum of understanding filed with the Delaware Court of Chancery, the deal pretty much resolves both sets of cases, and the plaintiffs, lawyers behind the New York litigation will be seeking a cut of whatever attorney fees the court agrees to award.
