Our millions of daily readers will remember Andrew's post from last month on Judge Connolly's Order in Vestolit GmbH v. Shell Chemical LP, C.A. No. 24-1401-CFC (D. Del.). As a brief refresher, Vestolit had filed a 1782 application seeking to serve subpoenas on both Shell and its CEO. The papers, however, only mentioned subpoenas to be served on the corporation and referred to the individual subpoena only obliquely as attachments to the filing.
Judge Connolly noted that this failure to specifically reference the personal subpoena may have been a violation of the lawyers' duty of candor and thus issued an order to show cause why they should not be sanctioned, and denied the application in its entirety pending the response.
Yesterday Judge Connolly issued his order on the sanctions issue and the underlying application. Probably most interesting to you, reader, is that the Court found that there had been no violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct:
I accept counsel's apologies for the Application's deficiencies, am persuaded that counsel did not intentionally withhold from the Court material facts in violation of Rule 3.3(d), and will, therefore, not deny the Application in toto.
Vestolit GmbH v. Shell Chemical LP, C.A. No. 24-1401-CFC (D. Del. Mar. 4, 2025).
The Court did, however, find that the problems with the original application were serious enough to warrant denying the application to serve the individual subpoena on the CEO:
[E]ven if this Court could have personal jurisdiction over Ms. Kline consistent with due process, I would exercise my discretion and deny the Application's request to subpoena Ms. Kline because of the seriousness of the deficiencies in the Application and supporting briefing I identified in the January 14, 2025 Memorandum Order. . . . Although, as noted above, I am persuaded that counsel did not intentionally withhold material information from the Application and briefing, to countenance such deficiencies by simply ignoring them would send the wrong message to counsel in this case and to the bar. Lawyers' professional obligations are at their highest when they seek ex parte relief, and judges, especially in busy courts like this one, necessarily rely not only on counsel's honesty, but also on their diligence, in ex parte matters.
Id. at 3-4
