Delaware Claims Processing Facility, LLC v. DBMP LLC, No. 469, 2025 (Del. July 31, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
Sitting en banc, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a Court of Chancery ruling that had let a group of asbestos manufacturers press a suit to stop ten settlement trusts and their claims processor from deleting decades of claimant files. Those manufacturers did not name a lawsuit they wanted the files for, and argued that no such identification was required. In the Supreme Court’s view, that omission was fatal to their complaint.
The trusts described the deletion as ordinary compliance with data protection law. According to the manufacturers, the policies were designed to evade production in current and future proceedings. The appeal turned on the complaint’s failure to identify any action in which the manufacturers wanted the files, not on either account of the trusts’ motive.
What Happened
Solvent manufacturers defending asbestos tort suits want the settlement trusts’ claimant files, which the complaint called Claims Data, because those files show a plaintiff’s other exposures and other recoveries. By January 2025 the trusts had adopted data policies that, in their telling, brought them into compliance with various data protection laws. Those laws limit the personal data an organization may obtain and retain. The policies implemented the limits by requiring the destruction of Claims Data after a specified time.
The manufacturers sued in the Court of Chancery for a declaration that the trusts had a duty to preserve the Claims Data and for an injunction requiring them to retain it, without identifying any lawsuit in which they wanted it. On the trusts’ motion to dismiss, the Court of Chancery raised the equitable bill of discovery on its own initiative. Courts of equity used that mechanism to obtain evidence before the modern discovery rules existed, and the Supreme Court noted that neither the parties nor the court had found a Delaware opinion mentioning it since 1956. Chancery denied the motion, concluding that the complaint had pleaded such a bill.
The Court’s Analysis
Working from two equity treatises and a handful of decisions from other jurisdictions, the Delaware Supreme Court identified three elements of an equitable-bill-of-discovery claim: "(i) that the requesting party has an interest in the discovery, (ii) that the discovery sought is material to a specific pending or anticipated claim, and (iii) that a court of law cannot compel the discovery". That enumeration, the court said, does not differ radically from the Court of Chancery’s. The Supreme Court identified one variation, that a pending or anticipated claim must be specifically identified in the complaint or petition, and the manufacturers’ complaint failed it.
They argued that they had no need to identify one, since they are defendants in asbestos suits around the country. Chancery had accepted that reasoning, relying on those allegations among others. Treating them as enough unduly relaxes the standard for an exceptional remedy, the Supreme Court concluded. Without an identifiable pending or anticipated action at law, the court explained, it is left "with no gauge with which to measure the appropriate scope of the bill." A bill issued on an unspecified claim, in the court’s view, will almost inevitably be broader than discovery in the underlying action would allow. Chancery had been asked to preserve Claims Data from hundreds of thousands of claimants’ files spanning multiple decades.
A complaint that identifies the action can still obtain preservation relief. The Supreme Court assumed without deciding that an equitable bill of discovery remains viable in Delaware. On that assumption, it stated that Chancery may order material preserved for use in other litigation where the requesting party satisfies the three elements. What Chancery may not enter is a broad preservation order against third parties when the requesting party identifies no pending or imminent action in which the documents are both relevant and unavailable through ordinary discovery.
Why It Matters
Name the action before asking a court to stop somebody else’s deletion. Without one, a judge cannot measure how far the order should reach, and that is the reason the Delaware court gave for declining to relax the requirement.
The scope of the request is the second thing to check. A preservation order reaching wider than what discovery in the underlying suit would produce is a sign the request belongs in that suit instead.
Organizations increasingly destroy records on schedules set by privacy compliance, and those schedules do not account for the litigants who will want the records later. A live matter, a subpoena, and a targeted preservation demand do the work a standing hold cannot. The manufacturers did gain time. The trusts stipulated that the policies would not take effect while the litigation was pending, and Chancery entered the stipulation as an order. That protection was tied to the pendency of the suit, and the Supreme Court remanded with direction to enter judgment dismissing the action. A stipulation buys time to identify the claim, and no more.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
