The Delaware Department of Finance’s (the “Department”) unclaimed property enforcement practices continue to undergo challenges in state and federal courts through claims involving both companies and other states. The following is brief overview of the latest developments in a few noteworthy cases.
On June 28, 2016, a federal court gave a major victory to Temple-Inland Inc. in its dispute with Delaware, declaring some of the state’s most egregious unclaimed property audit practices to be unconstitutional executive action. The court found that the state, and its contract auditors, waited more than two decades to perform an audit, ignored the applicable statute of limitations, failed to notify the company that records needed to be kept beyond standard retention periods,…