Court Opinion

ID: 9925708
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-22 20:02:59.97141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:27.657297
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF CHANCERY OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE

 ELECTRIC LAST MILE                       )
 SOLUTIONS, INC. STOCKHOLDER              )     CONSOLIDATED
 LITIGATION                               )     C.A. No. 2022-0630-KSJM

                    ORDER RESOLVING MOTION TO DISMISS1

      1.     This action arises from alleged breaches of fiduciary duty that occurred

in connection with a stockholder vote to approve a “de-SPAC” merger that took place

in June 2021. The plaintiffs are stockholders of Forum III Merger Corporation

(“Forum III”), a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”), that merged with

Electric Last Mile (“ELM”), Inc, a private company. That transaction resulted in the

formation of Electric Last Mile Solutions, Inc. (“ELMS”), which was a publicly traded

electric vehicle manufacturer until 2022. The plaintiffs asserted claims for breach of

fiduciary duty against the SPAC sponsor and the directors of Forum III: Marshall

Kiev, Richard Katzman, Steven Burns, and Jeffrey Nachbor. The plaintiffs allege

that the Forum III defendants failed to fulfill their duty of disclosure to stockholders

before the approval vote. They also claim that ELM co-founders, Jason Luo and

James Taylor, aided and abetted in the other defendants’ fiduciary breaches. Luo

and Taylor—but not the other defendants—moved to dismiss the complaint. Their

motion is denied.

1 The facts are drawn from the Verified Complaint and the documents incorporated

by reference. C.A. No. 2022-0630-KSJM, Docket (“Dkt.”) 63, Verified Consolidated
Stockholder Class Action Complaint (“Compl.”).
      2.     Forum III was formed on June 25, 2019. It went public on August 21,

2020 and had two years to complete a merger with a target company. The day it went

public, Forum III started discussions with Luo about a merger with ELM. At the

time, ELM had neither revenue nor operations, but it had plans to disrupt the electric

vehicle and delivery market in the United States. Discussions and negotiations

between Forum III and the ELM continued through the Autumn of 2020. The parties

entered into a merger agreement on December 10, 2020 (the “Merger Agreement”).

      3.     After announcing the deal, Luo and Taylor worked with Forum III

directors and management to hype the transaction to the market through investor

presentations, press releases, conference calls, and interviews. These presentations

were bullish about ELM’s future performance, with Luo and Taylor discussing

projections that predicted ELM would soon be a $3 billion company. ELM also

engaged in and sponsored press releases, investor calls, and online posts that

supported the merger and boasted about ELM’s capabilities.

      4.     Forum III issued a proxy statement in connection with the merger (the

“Proxy”) on June 9, 2021. Three aspects of the Proxy are relevant to Luo and Taylor’s

motion. First, the Proxy described ELM as having “in-house engineering expertise,”

“manufacturing processes,” “in-house manufacturing” at the Mishawaka, Indiana

facility, and the ability to “assembl[e]” its “own, unique electric vehicles.”2 But the

Proxy did not disclose agreements between ELM and Liuszhou Wuling Automobile

Industry, Co., Ltd. (“Wuling”), a Chinese company, that gave Wuling “end-to-end

2 Compl. at ¶ 99.

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responsibility for the overall design, engineering and production” of ELM’s vehicles.3

Second, the Proxy integrated ambitious projections prepared by ELM. Finally, the

Proxy did not disclose in detail that Lou and Taylor had purchased equity in ELM at

a discount before the merger.

       5.        On June 24, 2021, stockholders representing 66.86% of Forum III’s

issued and outstanding shares approved the merger.         The redemption date for

stockholders was June 22, 2021.

       6.        Stockholders were left disappointed. After the merger closed, ELMS

slashed its estimated production for the first and third quarters of 2021. A special

committee investigation also revealed that in November and December 2020, shortly

before the merger closed, Luo and Taylor purchased equity in ELM at substantial

discounts. Because of this, the ELMS Board removed Luo and Taylor from their

positions for cause. Luo and Taylor then resigned on February 1, 2022.

       7.        Things got worse. On February 8, 2022, BDO LLP (“BDO”) resigned as

ELMS’s auditor, citing the company’s failure to take timely and appropriate remedial

action with respect to “illegal” acts.4 On March 14, 2022, ELMS disclosed that the

Securities and Exchange Commission had opened an investigation into Luo and

Taylor’s equity transactions and BDO’s resignation.

3 Id. at ¶ 101.

4 Id. at ¶ 26.

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         8.    ELMS filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on June 14, 2022. At the time, it

was earning no income from its business operations and could not fund its operations

and or pay its debts. On July 29, 2022, ELMS’s stock was delisted from NASDAQ.

         9.    The plaintiffs filed this action on November 30, 2022.5 Luo and Taylor

moved to dismiss the claim against them for aiding and abetting on February 13,

2023.6 The parties completed briefing on the motions on May 11, 2023, and the court

held oral argument on October 30, 2023.7

         10.   “[T]he governing pleading standard in Delaware to survive a motion to

dismiss is reasonable ‘conceivability.’”8 When considering a motion to dismiss under

Rule 12(b)(6), the court must “accept all well-pleaded factual allegations in the

[c]omplaint as true . . . draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff, and

deny the motion unless the plaintiff could not recover under any reasonably

conceivable set of circumstances susceptible of proof.”9 The court, however, need not

“accept conclusory allegations unsupported by specific facts or . . . draw unreasonable

inferences in favor of the non-moving party.”10

5 Dkt. 63.

6 Dkt. 68; Dkt. 70.

7 Dkt. 83; Dkt. 100, Dkt. 101.

8 Cent. Mortg. Co. v. Morgan Stanley Mortg. Cap. Hldgs. LLC, 27 A.3d 531, 537 (Del.

2011).
9 Id. at 536 (citing Savor, Inc. v. FMR Corp., 812 A.2d 894, 896–97 (Del. 2002)).

10 Price v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Inc., 26 A.3d 162, 166 (Del. 2011) (citing

Clinton v. Enter. Rent-A-Car Co., 977 A.2d 892, 895 (Del. 2009)), overruled on other
grounds by Ramsey v. Ga. S. Univ. Advanced Dev. Ctr., 189 A.3d 1255 (Del. 2018).

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      11.    To state a claim for aiding and abetting, a plaintiff must allege: (i) the

existence of a fiduciary relationship; (ii) a breach of the fiduciary’s duty; and

(iii) knowing participation in the breach made by the non-fiduciary.11 The movants

do not dispute that the plaintiffs adequately allege the first two elements. Instead,

they argue that the plaintiffs have not adequately alleged knowing participation.

      12.    The element of knowing participation involves two concepts: knowledge

and participation.12 The plaintiffs allege that Luo and Taylor knowingly participated

in the Forum III defendants’ disclosure-related breach of fiduciary duty by causing

information they knew to be materially misleading to appear in the Proxy.

      13.    Specifically, the plaintiffs identify three categories of misleading or

omitted information. The first is the extraordinary projections Luo and Taylor gave

to Forum III and shared with stockholders in the “hyping” period. The second centers

on the non-disclosure or incomplete disclosure of the Chinese supplier (Wuling)

agreements. The third concerns Luo and Taylor’s “discount” holdings in ELM prior

to the merger. The first two categories are material to stockholders because they

directly relate to ELM’s suitability as a target company. The third category relates

to material conflicts of interests that should have been disclosed to stockholders.

11 In re Santa Fe Pac. Corp. S’holder Litig., 669 A.2d 59, 72 (Del. 1995); see also RBC

Capital Markets, LLC v. Jervis, 129 A.3d 816 at 861–62 (Del. 2015).
12 RBC, 129 A.3d at 862.

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      14.       Under Rule 9(b), a plaintiff can plead knowledge generally.13

Accordingly, “[f]or purposes of a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a complaint

need only plead facts supporting a reasonable inference of knowledge.” 14             The

plaintiffs have adequately alleged that Luo and Taylor knew the information in the

Proxy under these three categories was false or misleading.

      15.       Working through the three issues in reverse order, it is more than

reasonably conceivable that Luo and Taylor knew the facts relevant to their personal

acquisitions.

      16.       It is also reasonably conceivable that Luo and Taylor knew the

information concerning ELM’s domestic manufacturing capabilities and Chinese

supplier agreements. Luo and Taylor signed off on the supplier agreements and also

ran the company.         From this personal knowledge, Luo and Taylor knew the

information on the undisclosed Wuling agreements and ELM’s production

capabilities was not accurate in the Proxy.

      17.       The allegations concerning the projections are trickier, but the plaintiffs

still adequately allege that Luo and Taylor knew the projections they provided were

misleading.

13 Firefighters’ Pension Sys. of City of Kansas City, Missouri Tr. v. Presidio, Inc., 251

A.3d 212, 275–76 (Del. Ch. 2021) (quoting Dent v. Ramtron Int’l Corp., 2014 WL
2931180, at *17 (Del. Ch. Mar. 25, 2014).
14 Presidio, 251 A.3d at 275; Wells Fargo & Co. v. First Interstate Bancorp., 1996 WL

32169, at *11 (Del. Ch. Jan. 18, 1996) (“[O]n the question of pleading knowledge,
however, Rules 12(b)(6) and Rule 9(b) are very sympathetic to plaintiffs.”).

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         18.   In P3 Health Group Holdings, the court held that a projection that

“represented a dramatic reversal from a positive projection to a large loss” raised an

inference of scienter for knowing that the projections were false or misleading.15

Although projections may not “pan out,” the “timing, magnitude, and surrounding

circumstances” can raise an inference of scienter.16 In that case, the company in

question was a closely held LLC with only $14.49 million in assets and few employees.

Given the size of the company, the court held that the directors and management

would have had a “sufficient handle on its operations” to make a reasonable and

accurate projection of the Company’s performance.17 But the company “missed by

miles.”18 The complaint portrays ELM and its projections similarly to the company

in P3.

         19.   Although the fact that a business has missed a near-term projection by

a large margin supports several possible inferences—including some that are

innocent—one possible inference is that directors knew the projections were false

when they made them. Given that Luo and Taylor were managers and directors of

ELM, the court can infer they would know the true financial picture of ELM.

This inference is further supported by Luo and Taylor’s grandstanding to

stockholders over ELM’s future performance and their prior discussions with

15 In re P3 Health Gp. Hldgs., LLC, 2022 WL 15035833, at *5 (Del. Ch. Oct. 26, 2022).

16 Id.

17 Id.

18 Id.

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Forum III. Taylor and Luo knew the facts and figures when they were disclosing

them to stockholders and Forum III.

      20.    At oral argument, Taylor argued that the projections always had the

potential to be off the mark because ELM was such a new company, and so Luo and

Taylor would have no basis on which to make realistic projections. This is one

inference that could be drawn from the allegations. But it is a defendant-friendly

inference, and the court must draw a plaintiff-friendly one. The court infers that

because the projections failed so drastically and so quickly, their lack of veracity must

have been known to Luo and Taylor—the most senior members of ELM.

      21.    Having     satisfied   knowledge,   the   plaintiffs   must    also   allege

participation. The plaintiffs argue that it is inferable Luo and Taylor participated in

the breach by “misleading the [Board] with false or materially misleading

information” and/or “withholding information in a manner that misleads the

fiduciary on a material point” that created an “informational vacuum.” 19 The court

agrees. The alleged facts raise a reasonable inference that Luo and Taylor either

19 In re Columbia Pipeline Grp., Inc., 2021 WL 772562, at *54–55 (Del. Ch. Mar. 1,

2021); see also FrontFour Cap. Gp. LLC v. Taube, 2019 WL 1313408, at *26 (Del. Ch.
Mar. 11, 2019) (“In the events leading up to the Proposed Transactions, the Taube
brothers created an informational vacuum, which they then exploited.”); Mesirov v.
Enbridge Energy Co., 2018 WL 4182204, at *13–16 (Del. Ch. Aug. 29,
2018) (sustaining claim for aiding and abetting against a financial advisor for
preparing misleading analyses and creating an informational vacuum” that misled
the board); In re Wayport, Inc. Litig., 76 A.3d 296, 322 n.3 (Del. Ch. 2013) (holding
that “a non-fiduciary aider and abetter” could be exposed to liability “if, for example,
the non-fiduciary misled unwitting directors to achieve a desired result.”).

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misled the board for their own benefit or colluded with the board for the benefit of all

the defendants.

      22.    First, Taylor and Luo (and the Forum III directors) each harbored a

strong motivation to see the transaction close given their disparate interest compared

to stockholders, who would not see a loss if the merger was shot down.20 This

supports an inference that Taylor and Luo would obfuscate ELM’s true financial state

from stockholders to push through approval.

      23.    Second, ELM was contractually obligated to review the Proxy. The

Merger Agreement stated that:

             [ELM] shall ensure that none of the information supplied
             by or on its behalf for inclusion or incorporation by
             reference in the Proxy Statement will . . . contain any
             untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state any
             material fact . . . . If . . . [ELM] discovers any information .
             . . relating to [ELM], its . . . officers, directors or employees
             that should be set forth in an amendment or a supplement
             to the Proxy Statement so that the Proxy Statement would
             not include any misstatement of a material fact or omit to
             state any material fact . . . then [ELM] shall promptly

20 As to approval of the Merger Agreement, Luo and Taylor have a unity of interest

with the Forum III defendants. The Forum III defendants’ founder shares give rise
to conflicts. See In re MultiPlan Corp. S’holders Litig., 268 A.3d 784, 811 (Del. Ch.
2022); Delman v. GigAcquisitions3, LLC, 288 A.3d 692, 718 (Del. Ch. 2023). Luo and
Taylor’s discounted holdings in ELM created similar. Stockholders, on the other
hand, are “decoupled” by virtue of having the chance to redeem their initial
investment (plus interest). See Henry T.C. Hu & Lawrence A. Hamermesh,
Decoupling and Motivation: Re-Calibrating Standards of Fiduciary Review,
Rethinking “Disinterested” Shareholder Decisions, and Deconstructing “De-SPACs”,
78 Bus. Law. 999, 1039–45 (2023) (deconstructing competing interests at play in
Delaware SPAC cases).

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             inform Parent of such information . . . shall promptly
             provide all information required. . . .21

      24.    The movants argue that the contractual obligation evident in the Merger

Agreement is not dispositive on whether Luo and Taylor reviewed the Proxy. This is

true because the agreement did not personally obligate Luo and Taylor to review the

Proxy.22 But it does not preclude a finding of participation either.

      25.    The Merger Agreement required ELM to review the Proxy, and Luo and

Taylor represented ELM in its dealings with Forum III.          Luo and Taylor were

executives at the company and were involved in other high-level parts of the

transaction, including negotiating the letter of intent and Merger Agreement. Such

involvement alongside the company’s contractual obligation raises an inference that

Luo and Taylor reviewed the Proxy.

      26.    Finally, the plaintiffs’ best demonstration of participation comes from

the facts alleged that show Luo and Taylor’s active participation in the transaction.

In Great Hill Equity Partners IV, LP, the court inferred knowing participation where

21 The court takes judicial notice of this language from the Merger Agreement, which

was referenced multiple times in the complaint. See In re TIBCO Software Inc.
S’holders Litig., 2015 WL 6155894, at *7 n.8 (Del. Ch. Oct. 20, 2015) (“I take judicial
notice of the contents of the Merger Agreement, which is a defined term in the
Complaint and referenced throughout the Complaint.”); Meso Scale Diagnostics, LLC
v. Roche Diagnostics GmbH, 2011 WL 1348438, at *7–8 (Del. Ch. Apr. 8, 2011)
(considering merger agreement as integral to and incorporated in complaint).
22 As compared to the situations in Columbia and Mindbody.     In re Columbia Pipeline
Gp., Inc., 2021 WL 772562, at *58–59 (Del. Ch. Mar. 1, 2021) (holding plaintiffs
successfully raised inference of participation where agreement required company to
correct proxy); In re Mindbody, Inc., S’holder Litig., 2021 WL 5564687, at *2 (Del. Ch.
Nov. 29, 2021) (same).

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directors were closely involved in a sales process.23 That deep involvement raised “an

inference that [the directors] were aware of the catastrophic problems . . . and of [the

company’s] deeply misleading disclosures.”24 Here, the plaintiffs allege in detail how

Luo and Taylor participated and assisted in executing and marketing the transaction

to Forum III stockholders. Luo and Taylor were involved from start to finish. This

is a sufficient allegation of “close involvement” and knowing participation in Forum

III’s allegedly misleading disclosures to stockholders.

         27.   Moreover, when a defendant is an affiliate involved in a transaction, the

path to alleging participation is uncomplicated.25 “By definition, [an] affiliate is

already participating in the transaction, and principles of imputation permit the

knowledge of a duty-breaching fiduciary to be attributed to [an] affiliate.”26 Like a

financial advisor or other deal affiliate, Luo and Taylor were involved in the

transaction, and the plaintiffs plead facts that Luo and Taylor participated in the

execution and promotion of the merger.27 Overall, given the facts alleging Luo and

Taylor’s tentacular involvement in the transaction, the plaintiffs have adequately

23 See Great Hill Equity P’rs IV, LP v. SIG Growth Equity Fund I, LLLP, 2014 WL

6703980, at *21 (Del. Ch. Nov. 26, 2014).
24 Id.

25 In re Columbia Pipeline Grp., Merger Litig., 299 A.3d 393, 471 (Del. Ch. 2023).

26 Id.

27 See MultiPlan, 268 A.3d at 818 (Del. Ch. 2022) (inferring at pleading stage that

affiliate of interested controller who acted as financial advisor for transaction aided
and abetted breach of duty by controller); La. Mun. Police Empls.’ Ret. Sys. v. Fertitta,
2009 WL 2263406, at *7 n.27 (Del. Ch. July 28, 2009) (inferring at pleading stage that
affiliated entities that controller used to effectuate an interested transaction
knowingly participated in the breach).

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pled participation, and, in turn, along with knowledge, a claim that Luo and Taylor

aided and abetted the Forum III defendants’ disclosure breach.

      28.   For the foregoing reasons, Luo and Taylor’s motions to dismiss are

DENIED.

                                      /s/ Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick
                                      Chancellor
                                      Dated: January 22, 2024

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