Shawe v. Elting ( 2017 )

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE
PHILIP R. SHAWE, §
§ No. 487, 2016
Plaintiff/Respondent §
Below-Appellant, § Court Below—Court of Chancery
§ of the State of Delaware
v. §
§ C.A. Nos. 9661, 9686,
ELIZABETH ELTING, § 9700, 10449
§
Defendant/Petitioner §
Below-Appellee. §
Submitted: January 18, 2017
Decided: February 13, 2017
Before STRINE, Chief Justice; HOLLAND, VALIHURA, VAUGHN, and
SEITZ, Justices, constituting the Court en Banc.
Upon Appeal from the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware: AFFIRMED.
Peter B. Ladig, Esquire, Morris James LLP, Wilmington, Delaware; David B.
Goldstein, Esquire, Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, P.C.,
New York, New York for Plaintiff/Respondent, Appellant, Philip R. Shawe.
Kevin R. Shannon, Esquire, Berton W. Ashman, Jr., Esquire, Christopher N. Kelly,
Esquire, Jaclyn C. Levy, Esquire, and Mathew A. Golden, Esquire, Potter
Anderson & Corroon LLP, Wilmington, Delaware; Eric Alan Stone, Esquire,
Robert A. Atkins, Esquire, and Gerard E. Harper, Esquire, Paul, Weiss, Rifkand,
Wharton & Garrison LLP, New York, New York; Philip S. Kaufman, Esquire,
Ronald S. Greenberg, Esquire, Marjorie E. Sheldon, Esquire, and Jared I. Heller,
Esquire, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, New York, New York for
Defendant/Petitioner, Appellee, Elizabeth Elting.
SEITZ, Justice:
Philip Shawe appeals an order of the Court of Chancery sanctioning him for
misconduct throughout litigation with his current business partner and former
romantic partner, Elizabeth Elting. After an evidentiary hearing, the Court of
Chancery found that Shawe deleted documents from his computer, recklessly
failed to safeguard his cell phone, improperly gained access to Elting’s e-mails,
and lied multiple times under oath. The court also found that Shawe’s improper
conduct impeded the administration of justice, unduly complicated the
proceedings, and caused the court to make false factual findings. The Court of
Chancery ordered Shawe to pay 100% of the fees Elting incurred in connection
with bringing the motion for sanctions, and 33% of the fees she incurred litigating
the merits of the case, awarding Elting a total of $7,103,755 in fees and expenses.
On appeal, Shawe argues that the Court of Chancery erred in three respects:
(1) by finding that he acted in bad faith when he deleted the files from his laptop
and failed to safeguard his cell phone; (2) for failing to afford him criminal due
process protections before sanctioning him for “perjury”; and (3) by awarding
Elting an excessive fee. After a careful review of the record, we find that the Court
of Chancery followed the correct legal standards and made no errors of law in its
sanctions ruling. Shawe’s behavior was “unusually deplorable,”1 and thus the
1
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *13 (Del. Ch. July 20, 2016).
2
Court of Chancery acted well within its discretion by sanctioning him for his bad
faith conduct. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Chancery.
I.
In a companion opinion issued today, the Court has set forth the long history
of personal and business conflicts between Shawe and Elting as the co-founders
and co-CEOs of Transperfect Global, Inc. (“TPG”). We assume familiarity with
those facts, and in this decision set forth only the facts necessary to decide the
appeal from the sanctions order.
A. Tensions Rise
In October 2013, Elting hired Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP to try
to resolve the various disputes between Shawe and her. Shawe became enraged by
this and began spying on Elting. He directed employees to intercept Elting’s mail
and to monitor her phone calls. Then, in December 2013, Shawe began monitoring
Elting’s personal e-mails.
At first, Shawe falsely claimed that he, working alone, took Elting’s
computer and removed her hard drive so he could read her e-mails. In reality,
Shawe broke into Elting’s office on December 31, 2013 and brought her computer
to Michael Wudke, then-President of TPG’s forensic technology business. Wudke
imaged Elting’s hard drive by removing it from the computer and connecting it to a
3
forensic “Tableau device” with a “write blocker,” to conceal what he had done.2
After imaging the drive, Wudke restored it, and Shawe brought the computer back
to Elting’s office. Wudke then exported Elting’s e-mail files onto an external
device so that Shawe would have a copy. Wudke helped Shawe download Elting’s
e-mails on at least two other occasions in 2014 in substantially the same fashion.
Shawe instructed Wudke not to document his actions. As explained further below,
Shawe concealed Wudke’s role until November 2015.
Shawe also remotely accessed Elting’s computer at least forty-four times on
twenty-nine different occasions. He did this by using a “map” to gain access to
Elting’s computer using the TPG shared drive. Because Shawe had the proper
administrative permissions, he was able to access her computer remotely through
the shared drive.3 The majority of these instances occurred in the late evening and
early morning hours. He gained access to approximately 19,000 of Elting’s
e-mails, including approximately 12,000 privileged communications between her
and her counsel.
2
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *2.
3
App. to Answering Br. at 1161-62:
A computer user can “map” on his computer to use a shared drive on another
system to which the computer is connected and for which the user has the correct
permissions. Mapping a drive can make it easier for a user to quickly access files
or run programs on a shared drive. With the proper permissions or rights, such as
sufficient “administrator” rights, the user can navigate through the folders on the
mapped drive and has complete access to all files on the mapped drive as granted
based on the user’s permissions to that mapped drive and computer.
4
B. Nathan Richards Hired As Shawe’s “Paralegal”
On April 1, 2014, Nathan Richards, a former TPG employee, met with
Shawe in New York. Richards believed he was being summoned for a marketing
assignment. Instead, Shawe hired Richards as his personal “paralegal,” though
Richards had no experience in such a role. Shawe paid him $250,000—almost
twice his previous high salary—for his services. Throughout his tenure, Richards
broke into Elting’s office in the early hours of the morning to take photographs and
remove hard copies of documents.
C. Litigation Begins
Over the ensuing months, relations between Shawe and Elting deteriorated
even further, and it became abundantly clear that litigation was imminent. Thus,
on April 11, 2014, Shawe distributed a litigation hold notice to senior management
and other TPG employees.
In May 2014, Shawe and Elting filed four separate lawsuits against each
other, one in New York and three in the Court of Chancery. The Delaware suits
dealt with Elting’s petition for dissolution of TPG and the associated LLC
(Shawe’s and Elting’s asset protection and distribution vehicle) and Shawe’s
claimed fiduciary violations against Elting. On September 3, 2014, Elting served
Shawe with document requests and sent out a second, similar litigation hold notice
to TPG personnel.
5
In November 2014, shortly after the Court of Chancery ordered an expedited
trial on the parties’ claims, Shawe revealed that he had been reading Elting’s
personal e-mails, including privileged communications between Elting and her
counsel. The court thus ordered expedited discovery for a possible sanctions
motion.
D. The Cell Phone
Despite the two litigation hold notices and specialized knowledge as the
CEO of a company whose expertise is in document preservation and production,
Shawe did not preserve his cell phone or laptop.
On November 22, 2014, just four days after the Court ordered an expedited
trial, Shawe’s cell phone was allegedly damaged by his niece. According to
Shawe, while he and his brother were in the other room, his niece dropped the
phone in a plastic cup of Diet Coke. Shawe tried to revive it by drying it and
charging it, but was unsuccessful. The next week, he gave his phone to his
assistant, Joe Campbell, to try and fix it. Shawe did not remind Campbell about
his need to preserve the phone due to the litigation hold notices or outstanding
discovery requests. Campbell’s only qualification for the task was that his own
phone fell into a toilet once and it worked after he let it dry.
Campbell made modest (unsuccessful) efforts to revive the phone and
eventually put it in a desk drawer in his office. According to Campbell, sometime
6
in December 2014, he opened the drawer containing Shawe’s phone and noticed
rat droppings in the drawer. In a “visceral reaction,” he tossed the contents of the
drawer including the phone into the garbage. Campbell had been a paralegal for
five years and had received both litigation hold notices. The Court of Chancery
found this story “bizarre” and incredible.4 So do we.
E. Shawe Reveals He Has Been Reading Elting’s E-mails
Three days after the “Diet Coke” incident, Shawe sought a declaration by a
New York court that the e-mails Shawe accessed were not privileged. Until then,
Elting had not known that Shawe had been accessing her personal e-mails. Based
on the new information, Elting moved for expedited discovery to aid her in a
motion for sanctions. The court granted the motion, finding that “expediting
discovery was urgently necessary to protect Elting’s rights and the integrity of
these proceedings and related actions.”5
F. The December 2014 Deletions
After the Court of Chancery ordered expedited discovery, Shawe continued
to use his personal laptop. He made an image of the laptop on December 20, 2014
(the “December 20 Image”) but deleted 18,970 files the day before doing so. He
deleted files by sending them to the “recycle bin” folder and then emptying the
4
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *5.
5
Id. (internal citation omitted).
7
recycle bin. Shawe did not regularly empty his recycle bin, and as of December
19, 2014, forensic evidence showed that he had files dating back to August 2014 in
his recycle bin. Shawe also cleared his temporary internet files, browser history,
and temporary files created by application software, which included evidence of
his use of a program to view Elting’s e-mails. Unbeknownst to Shawe, his
operating system created volume shadow copies on December 8, 12, 16, and 19.
As a result, all but 1,068 of the e-mails were recovered. With Wudke’s assistance,
Shawe deleted another 22,000 e-mails on December 22. Wudke used a specialty
software program to permanently erase the files from the computer. As explained
below, Shawe lied for nearly a year about Wudke’s involvement and, instead,
blamed the deletions on Richards.
It was not until late December 2014 when Shawe’s own expert determined
that files had been deleted from Shawe’s laptop. On January 9, 2015 the expert
reported his findings to Shawe’s counsel. On January 12, Shawe flew to San
Diego to hand deliver to his expert the December 20 Image. On January 16,
Shawe’s “professional responsibility counsel,” Ronald Minkoff, sent Elting’s
counsel a letter disclosing the deletions, stating that Shawe had asked an
“assistant” to make a full forensic copy of his laptop and to then delete certain
files. The letter did not list the identity of the “assistant.” Shawe had retained
8
Minkoff to serve as his special counsel to advise him on various ethical issues,
including his use of Elting’s e-mails.
G. False Interrogatory and Deposition Responses
Shawe was scheduled to be deposed on January 20, 2015 about the e-mail
issues. The night before the deposition, Shawe submitted amended responses to
interrogatories from Elting. The Court of Chancery found the following concerns
with his interrogatory responses:
• Interrogatory No. 5 asked Shawe to describe each instance in which he had
accessed Elting’s hard drive. Shawe referenced only the 2013 incident and
omitted the other occasions.
• Interrogatory No. 17 asked Shawe to identify anyone who may have had
knowledge about his downloading and exporting Elting’s personal e-mail
files. Shawe listed twenty-seven people, yet did not identify Wudke.
• Interrogatories 20, 21, and 23 asked Shawe to identify persons with
knowledge of, or who may have assisted him in accessing or reviewing
documents on Elting’s hard drive. Shawe swore that no one other than his
counsel had information about his accessing or reviewing information on the
hard drive, and that no one assisted him in downloading or accessing
Elting’s personal e-mails.
9
Shawe appeared for deposition the next day. He testified that on New
Year’s Eve, he personally imaged Elting’s hard drive and exported the files
himself. He identified the “assistant” from Minkoff’s January 16 letter as
Richards, and said that Richards made a mirror image copy and deleted only files
that contained personal, privileged, or medical documents.
The court found that it was “convenient” for Shawe to finger Richards as his
accomplice because Shawe knew that Richards was quitting his job and moving
back to Washington.6 The court held that Shawe used Richards as a “scapegoat”
because he knew it would be difficult to track him down before the rapidly
approaching trial.7
H. False Trial Testimony And False Affidavit During Post-Trial Briefing
Trial began on February 23, 2015. On the third day, Shawe once again
falsely testified that it was Richards who made the December 20 Image and deleted
the files on his laptop. He also said he did not know how the December 20 Image
was made, or which files had supposedly been deleted.
On April 3, 2015, in connection with post-trial briefing, Shawe submitted an
affidavit where he again insisted that Richards made the December 20 Image and
6
Id. at *8.
7
Id.
10
deleted the files from his laptop. The affidavit also said that Campbell
“misplaced” the cell phone, omitting the fact that Campbell had thrown it out.
I. The Merits Opinion And The Sanctions Hearing
The Court of Chancery issued the Merits Opinion on August 13, 2015, and
ordered a hearing on Elting’s motion for sanctions for January 7-8, 2016.
On November 25, 2015, a newly retained Shawe attorney e-mailed Elting’s
counsel to add Wudke to Shawe’s previously exchanged witness list. The e-mail
stated that counsel had just learned that Wudke, not Richards, made the December
20 Image of Shawe’s laptop. The disclosure prompted Wudke’s deposition, during
which the extent of his involvement was revealed.
On July 20, 2016, the Court of Chancery granted Elting’s motion for
sanctions. The court held that Shawe engaged in bad faith:
(1) by intentionally attempting to destroy information on his laptop
computer after the Court had entered an order requiring him to
provide the laptop for forensic discovery, (2) by, at a minimum,
recklessly failing to safeguard evidence on his phone, which he
regularly used to exchange text messages with employees and which
was an important source for discovery, and (3) by repeatedly lying
under oath to conceal aspects of his secret extraction of information
from Elting’s hard drive and the deletion of information from his
laptop.8
8
Id. at *13.
11
The court determined that Shawe’s behavior caused delays, confusion, and
even led the court to make false findings.9 Thus, the court found fee shifting was
an appropriate remedy.10 Based on the court’s “deep familiarity with the twists and
turns of the case,”11 it ordered Shawe to pay 100% of the fees Elting incurred in
connection with bringing the motion for sanctions and 33% of the fees she incurred
from litigating the merits of the case. Elting’s counsel submitted supporting
materials regarding their fees. On August 19, 2016, the court entered a final order
and judgment, awarding Elting a total of $6,519,471 in attorneys’ fees and
$584,284 in expenses, and ordering Shawe to pay the total amount ($7,103,755)
within ten business days. This appeal followed.
II.
On appeal, Shawe argues that the Court of Chancery erred in three respects:
(1) Shawe did not act in bad faith by deleting the files from his laptop and failing
to safeguard his phone, and thus the court’s sanction was improper; (2) the court
9
The Merits Opinion mistakenly names Richards instead of Wudke as a participant in the
December 2014 deletions.
10
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *18:
These actions had the effect of obstructing the administration of justice,
prejudiced Elting’s ability to fully develop the record at the Merits Trial, and
protracted the proceedings. They also had another pernicious effect. As noted
above, Shawe’s false testimony misled the Court and caused Richards to be
identified mistakenly in the Merits Opinion as a participant in the December 22
deletions to Shawe’s laptop. Richards credibly testified that he was “horrified”
when he saw this.
11
Id. at *19.
12
should have afforded him criminal due process protections before sanctioning him
for perjury; and (3) the court’s fee award was excessive. For purposes of our
review, we will not disturb the Court of Chancery’s decision to impose fee-
shifting12 and spoliation13 sanctions absent an abuse of discretion. “To the extent a
decision to impose sanctions is factually based, we accept the trial court’s factual
findings so long as they are sufficiently supported by the record, are the product of
an orderly and logical reasoning process, and are not clearly erroneous.”14 We
review questions of law and claimed constitutional violations de novo.15
A.
Shawe first argues that the Court of Chancery erred by finding that he acted
in bad faith by deleting files from his laptop and failing to safeguard his cell phone.
Specifically, Shawe argues that no evidence was lost because the laptop and the
December 20 Image were eventually produced, and thus the court erred by finding
he acted in bad faith.
Delaware follows the “American Rule,” which provides that each party is
generally expected to pay its own attorneys’ fees regardless of the outcome of the
12
RBC Capital Markets, LLC v. Jervis, 129 A.3d 816, 876 (Del. 2015).
13
Genger v. TR Inv’rs, LLC, 26 A.3d 180, 190 (Del. 2011).
14
Id.15
Stanford v. State Merit Emp. Relations Bd., 44 A.3d 923, 2012 WL 1549811, at *3 (Del. May
1, 2012) (TABLE).
13
litigation.16 There are, however, several recognized exceptions to the rule, such as
the bad faith exception.17 “Although there is no single definition of bad faith
conduct, courts have found bad faith where parties have unnecessarily prolonged
or delayed litigation, falsified records[,] or knowingly asserted frivolous claims.”18
Courts have also found bad faith where a party misled the court, altered testimony,
or changed his position on an issue.19 “The bad faith exception is applied in
‘extraordinary circumstances’ as a tool to deter abusive litigation and to protect the
integrity of the judicial process.”20 The party seeking fees must demonstrate by
clear evidence that the other party acted in subjective bad faith.21
Shawe argues that because Elting was not prejudiced by his misconduct, the
court was without power to sanction him. There is no requirement that Shawe
succeed in his efforts to thwart Elting’s ability to prosecute the merits of the case
for the Court of Chancery to have the power to sanction him.22 Even so, as the
Court of Chancery held, the deletion of the files from Shawe’s laptop “prejudiced
16
Montgomery Cellular Holding Co., Inc. v. Dobler, 880 A.2d 206, 227 (Del. 2005).
17
Johnston v. Arbitrium (Cayman Islands) Handels AG, 720 A.2d 542, 545 (Del. 1998).
18
Id. at 546.
19
Beck v. Atl. Coast PLC, 868 A.2d 840, 851 (Del. Ch. 2005).
20
Montgomery Cellular, 880 A.2d at 227.
21
Lawson v. State, 91 A.3d 544, 552 (Del. 2014).
22
See Kaung v. Cole Nat. Corp., 884 A.2d 500, 506 (Del. 2005) (Court properly sanctioned
defendant who engaged in “abusive litigation tactics” by repeatedly postponing his appearance at
depositions, refusing to answer questions when he finally appeared, and his attorney did not
respond to interrogatories or requests for production).
14
Elting’s ability to litigate effectively,” by preventing her from accessing the
information on the laptop until shortly before trial.23
Shawe deleted 41,000 files from his laptop in December 2014 in the face of
two litigation hold notices, one of which he issued, and an expedited discovery
order that permitted Elting to conduct forensic discovery of Shawe’s laptop.
Although these files were ultimately recovered—except 1,068 that were
unrecoverable—the court held “that the intended purpose of Shawe’s actions was
to make information unavailable for the required forensic discovery in direct
contravention of the Expedited Discovery Order,” and that Shawe would have
succeeded but for “the fortuity of the laptop’s volume shadow copy system and
[his expert’s] intervention—but that does not negate his illicit intent.”24 Thus, it
was a proper exercise of the Court of Chancery’s discretion to sanction Shawe for
his intentional misconduct.
B.
Shawe next argues that Elting did not prove that the evidence on his cell
phone was relevant to the Merits Trial, and thus the Court of Chancery should not
have sanctioned him for recklessly failing to preserve his text messages.
23
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *15.
24
Id. at *13, *19.
15
A party in litigation has an affirmative duty to preserve potentially relevant
evidence.25 A court may sanction a party who “destroy[s] relevant evidence” or
“fail[s] to prevent the destruction of such evidence.”26 “A party is not obligated to
‘preserve every shred of paper, every e-mail or electronic document, but instead
must preserve what it knows, or reasonably should know, is relevant to the action,
is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, is
reasonably likely to be requested during discovery and/or is the subject of a
pending discovery request.’”27 “To impose monetary sanctions, [a court] need
only find that a party had a duty to preserve evidence and breached that duty.”28
As the Court of Chancery held, in the face of two litigation hold notices and
an outstanding discovery request, Shawe’s “failure to safeguard evidence from his
iPhone, an important source of discovery given his frequent use of text messages,
by not safeguarding it in the first place and by turning the allegedly damaged
phone over to a subordinate under his firm control who was not competent to
recover information from it was, at a minimum, reckless, and potentially much
25
Beard Research, Inc. v. Kates, 981 A.2d 1175, 1185 (Del. Ch. 2009).
26
Id.27
Seibold v. Camulos Partners LP, 2012 WL 4076182, at *23 (Del. Ch. Sept. 17, 2012) (quoting
TR Investors, LLC v. Genger, 2009 WL 4696062, at *17 (Del. Ch. Dec. 9, 2009), aff’d, 26 A.3d
180 (Del. 2011)).
28
Beard Research, 981 A.2d at 1194.
16
worse.”29 Further, instead of immediately disclosing that Campbell had thrown out
his phone, he hid the truth until Campbell was deposed a year later.
The Court of Chancery found that the text messages:
[W]ere an important source of discovery that were reasonably
calculated to yield information relevant to the Merits Trial, such as
evidence of deadlocks between the Company’s co-CEOs and the bias
of witnesses who testified on Shawe’s behalf. Indeed, many text
messages retrieved from Shawe’s next phone provided relevant
evidence at the Merits Trial.30
Contrary to Shawe’s contention that there is no evidence to support this finding,
the court relied on texts from Shawe’s replacement phone in the Merits Opinion.31
Thus, the Court of Chancery was well within its discretion to sanction Shawe for
his litigation misconduct.
C.
Shawe also argues that the Court of Chancery punished him criminally for
perjury without due process protections by sanctioning him for his continuous lies
under oath. He argues that the sanction hearing was limited to eight particularized
grounds, and perjury was not one of them.
While Shawe’s conduct may have constituted perjury, the court did not
charge or convict him of perjury. Rather, the court imposed a civil sanction
29
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *19.
30
Id. at *16 (emphasis in original).
31
See In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2015 WL 4874733, at *23.
17
against him for his repeated lies under oath in interrogatory responses, at
deposition, at trial, and in a post-trial affidavit to cover up what he had done.
Shawe’s falsehoods wasted the court’s time, needlessly complicated and expanded
the proceedings, and caused the court to find erroneous facts in its Merits Opinion.
The Court of Chancery thus acted well within its discretion to sanction him for
lying during the litigation.32
D.
Shawe next argues that the Court of Chancery’s award of attorneys’ fees was
excessive because (1) Elting did not prevail on all of the grounds alleged in her
motion for sanctions; (2) Elting did not “submit a shred of evidence of how she
incurred additional fees on the Merits by the limited misconduct found, and the
court cited no evidence justifying as compensatory any part of the Merits Fees”33;
(3) Shawe prevailed on several claims on the merits; and (4) Elting would have
incurred the same expenses litigating the merits of the dispute regardless of
Shawe’s misconduct. He also argues that because the fees were punitive and not
compensatory, he was entitled to criminal due process protections.
The Court of Chancery awarded Elting all of her attorneys’ fees related to
the litigation of the sanctions motion. It also held that:
32
See Choupak v. Rivkin, 2015 WL 1589610, at *22-23 (Del. Ch. Apr. 6, 2015) aff’d, 129 A.3d
232, 2015 WL 8483702 (Del. Dec. 4, 2015) (TABLE).
33
Opening Br. at 55.
18
An additional amount is appropriate because Shawe’s bad-faith
misconduct significantly complicated and permeated the litigation of
the Merits Trial, from at least December 2, 2014, the date on which
Elting sought expedited discovery in aid of her later-filed Sanctions
Motion, until its conclusion. For that period, an appropriate sanction
is to shift to Shawe a reasonable percentage of the attorneys’ fees and
expenses Elting incurred in connection with the Merits Trial because
Shawe’s misconduct unduly complicated and drove up the costs of
that proceeding. Based on my deep familiarity with the twists and
turns of this case, 33% is a reasonable approximation to compensate
Elting fairly for that time period.34
The Court of Chancery has broad discretion in fixing the amount of
attorneys’ fees to be awarded. Absent a clear abuse of discretion, this Court will
not reverse the award.35 The Court of Chancery found that “[e]ach form of
Shawe’s misconduct prejudiced Elting’s ability to fully develop the record for, and
needlessly complicated the litigation of, the Merits Trial. Shawe’s actions also
necessitated holding a second evidentiary hearing to address the issues raised by
the Sanctions Motion.”36 The Court of Chancery did not award Elting superfluous
damages: Elting incurred all of the expenses for which she is being recompensed.
Thus, the Court did not abuse its discretion by awarding Elting her fees.
Further, as explained above, criminal sanctions were not imposed for
perjury, and Shawe’s due process argument is thus without merit.
34
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *19.
35
Johnston v. Arbitrium (Cayman Islands) Handels AG, 720 A.2d 542, 547 (Del. 1998).
36
In re Shawe & Elting LLC, 2016 WL 3951339, at *19.
19
III.
The Court of Chancery did not abuse its discretion by sanctioning Shawe
based on a clear record of egregious misconduct and repeated falsehoods during
the litigation. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Chancery.
20