Robert Beste is a partner and a member of the Commercial Disputes practice group focusing on business disputes and disputes relating to Delaware corporations and alternative entities such as limited liability companies and limited partnerships.
Rob is a detail-oriented trial attorney with a record of success in each of Delaware’s trial courts, including the Court of Chancery, the Complex Commercial Litigation Division of the Superior Court, and the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. Rob has extensive experience in trial work and focusses on corporate and entity litigation, business valuation, electronic discovery, brief writing, and effective argument and presentation at all stages of a dispute. Rob’s work includes representing corporations, entities, fiduciaries, investors, and contracting parties in a wide range of corporate litigation, including fiduciary duty and class actions, governance disputes, appraisal actions, books and records actions, director election contests, contract disputes, and similar matters.
Most recently, in April 2024, Rob successfully defeated a claim seeking US$85 million in lost profits, instead obtaining US$2 million on counterclaims, in a breach of contract dispute. The parties bitterly disputed the matter, which required that Rob’s clients file nineteen discovery- and trial-related motions during the dispute that started in November 2019 and went to trial in October 2023. Rob personally took or defended twenty-three depositions, handled the financial experts of both parties, personally found the accounting-related wrongdoing at issue in the matter, and tried the case leading a team of two other attorneys.
Rob tried the first contested matter to reach judgment under Delaware’s then-new statute allowing the Court of Chancery to review and validate defective corporate acts, 8 Del. C. § 205. After trial, the court retroactively validated numerous problematic stock issuances and re-established Rob’s clients’ voting control of the company.
Following law school, Rob clerked on Delaware’s Superior Court for The Honorable Joseph R. Slights, III.
Rob has been practicing in Wilmington since 2000 and immersed in the legal field since working at law firms in his early teens. Rob is the proud father of two and lives in Wilmington with his wife of over twenty years, who also is a Delaware attorney, and both Rob and his wife were raised by long-time Delaware attorneys.
