AMC: The Appeal Egg Drops Before The Opinion Chicken Hatches

I'm pretty sure I know which is supposed to come first here.

As we all sit and wait patiently for the Court to render its Opinion (Capital “O” or otherwise) in the AMC Entertainment case, and wonder whether we will be going around the ring or onto new pastures, knowing that either way, pursuant to the wisdom of that old nineties’ track, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” suddenly last night, the music stopped.

One of the things that everyone involved has spent some amount of time gaming out is how the various decision tree options could lead to some interrelated potential appeals process. As we’ve discussed previously, there are myriad complexities with interplay between the SQO, a potential stay, injunction, and/or bond pending any possible appeal. There are all sorts of intricacies and nuances here, but in pretty much every game theoretic aspect that I have considered, I gotta be honest, each and every one involved the Vice Chancellor actually rendering her decision before the appeal was filed.

Welp.

Just goes to show you that stochasticity can never be underestimated as a constant. Late last night, as I was doing what I always do, and ending the day by perusing literally each and every piece of electronic paper that was filed in and out of the Court of Chancery, the Superior Court’s CCLD, and the Delaware Supreme Court, you might be surprised — if you hadn’t been paying attention to what I’ve already written above — to hear what I found. Yes, that’s right.

An appeal filed in the AMC Entertainment, Inc. case.

How can that be, you might rightly ask? How can that be, when there isn’t even an opinion yet rendered in the case? Let me explain.