Elan injunction discharged

The High Court has discharged an injunction obtained by biotech group Elan aimed at preventing two of it's directors from using US courts to launch with it claimed was an unauthorised review of corporate governance at the company.

Last month Elan secured a temporary injunction against directors Jack Schuler and Vaughan Bryson after it claimed the two had instructed a US legal firm to undertake a separate review in the US of allegations of breaches of corporate governance in a number of transactions by Elan.

At the time Elan had commissioned legal firm McKenna Long and Aldridge, assisted by William Fry in Dublin to conducted an independent review of its corporate governance at the centre of the allegations. That report subsequently found no legal breeches or wrongdoing by Elan's management, board of directors, or advisers.

In its proceedings Elan argued that the law firm engaged by the two directors had demanded information and documents from the company and the lawyers undertaking its independent review and that the two directors were trying to undermine the review already being conducted.

Elan, which has several hundred employees at its facility in Athlone Co Roscommon, also claimed that the directors' proposed action was in breach of the terms of a settlement agreement under which the two directors had joined the board of Elan last year.

Today when the matter was briefly mentioned before Ms Justice Mary Laffoy the court heard that both parties in the action were consenting to the interim order being struck out, with general liberty to re-enter.