Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware Slams Former Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Strine for Hypocrisy

WILMINGTON, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Following the recent publication of an opinion piece on Bloomberg.com, co-authored by former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Leo E. Strine Jr. and Kirby M. Smith, Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware Campaign Manager Chris Coffey has released the following statement:

“A quick read of Leo Strine’s recent piece on Bloomberg.com titled ‘Companies Need to Share More of Their Riches With Workers,’ would have readers believe that in his roles as Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor and Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, he presided in a manner that reflected his belief that ‘the purpose of a corporation shouldn't be just to serve shareholders, but workers as well.’

“But the truth is that during his tenure as the most powerful judge in Delaware, Leo Strine consistently placed the interests of c-level executives and directors over shareholders, and more importantly, over the worker those companies are built on. For years, the Chancery Court completely discounted and disenfranchised employees and Strine himself has authored and upheld those decisions.

“Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the TransPerfect case, where he oversaw an unprecedented ruling that, for the first time in U.S. history, forced the sale of a profitable company. The end result was an incredible burden placed on the company’s workers who endured cuts to their benefits while Chancery Court-appointed custodians Robert Pincus and Jennifer Voss of Skadden Arps bilked the company for millions without ever producing a single invoice.

“In a case during his tenure on the Chancery Court, Strine was even rebuked by the Delaware Supreme Court for insensitive comments, a stunning and rare formal criticism that reinforced Strine’s long history of opining wildly from the bench rather than focusing on the case at hand and using his authority to protect employees.

“Now that he’s left the bench to make untold millions peddling his influence for a private law firm – where, as a result of weak anti-corruption laws, he enjoys heightened access to those who still sit on Delaware’s judiciary – he has the audacity to pretend he cares about employees? It’s remarkably convenient that with his own political future to think about now, Mr. Strine has had this epiphany and is now pretending to care about workers, but we know the truth, and that is that he represents everything wrong with the judicial system in Delaware today and why we need to fix what’s broken immediately.”