Vice Chancellor rules affordable housing operator had no right to cancel co-founder’s ownership stake.
A Delaware judge has handed Will Blodgett, founder and chief executive of affordable housing developer Tredway, a decisive win in his long-running legal fight with Fairstead, the firm he helped build before launching his own company.
On May 14, 2026, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery granted Blodgett summary judgment in the suit Fairstead brought against him, finding that Fairstead’s entities had improperly canceled Blodgett’s equity interests. The Real Deal first reported the ruling. Because Blodgett countersued, the decision opens the door to a potentially multimillion-dollar payout from Fairstead, with attorneys for Blodgett indicating the figure could reach tens of millions of dollars.
“The court found in Blodgett’s favor on all claims, confirmed for a second time that Fairstead had no right to cancel Blodgett’s equity and recognized that Blodgett’s efforts and expertise were essential to Fairstead’s success,” Elisha Barron, a partner at Susman Godfrey and an attorney for Blodgett, told The Real Deal.
What the court decided
Vice Chancellor Laster’s opinion drew a sharp line between two roles Blodgett held at the company: his role as an employee, governed by an employment agreement, and his role as a member of the limited liability companies that gave him an ownership stake in the business. An arbitrator previously found that Blodgett breached his employment agreement by sharing confidential information during his planning to leave the firm. The Delaware court ruled, however, that the same conduct did not amount to a breach of the LLC agreements that controlled his equity.
That distinction is the linchpin of the ruling. By treating the employee duties and the member duties as separate sets of obligations, the court concluded that Fairstead’s LLCs had no contractual basis to strip Blodgett of his ownership interests. The size of the resulting award has not yet been determined.
The dispute in brief
Blodgett was one of three founders of Fairstead, alongside hedge fund manager Stuart Feldman and attorney Jeffrey Goldberg. According to the court’s telling, Blodgett ran the day-to-day operations of the affordable housing business, built out its team, and, in Laster’s phrasing, “provided the vision and the energy.” Fairstead grew rapidly under that leadership.
By 2020, Blodgett and another senior executive, John Tatum III, were pushing for a restructuring that would give them a larger share of the business they were running. When that effort stalled, the two began negotiating their exits and laying the groundwork for a new venture. The Real Deal reported that Goldberg discovered an invoice tied to outside counsel for the new company, and Fairstead moved to terminate Blodgett and cancel his equity.
Litigation followed. Parts of the dispute were routed through arbitration, where Blodgett was found to have breached his employment agreement by sharing confidential information during the planning period. The arbitration left open the question of whether Fairstead could lawfully strip his equity. The Delaware court has now answered that question in Blodgett’s favor.
A second win for the founder side
Wednesday’s ruling comes on the heels of a related win for Tatum, whose own trial covered much of the same ground. The Real Deal noted that the latest decision is the second time a court has confirmed that Fairstead had no right to cancel Blodgett’s equity. Blodgett has consistently maintained that he was treated as disposable by his co-founders after building the affordable housing arm of the firm.
In notes referenced during the Tatum litigation, Blodgett described himself as the firm’s “golden goose,” writing that he was “leveraging my name, my family’s name, my relationships” while “getting NOTHING in return.” The court appeared to agree with the underlying account. “Fairstead enjoyed considerable success, and Blodgett and Tatum believed they were chiefly responsible for it,” Laster wrote. “That was true.”
A line on the company
In a conversation with Goldberg captured in the record, Blodgett summed up his frustration in a single line that has now traveled with the case: “Everyone says it’s my company.” That phrase is the title of The Real Deal’s coverage of the ruling.
Tredway today
Since his departure from Fairstead, Blodgett has built Tredway into a national affordable housing platform. Per company disclosures cited in the original Real Deal piece, Tredway has built, bought, or preserved roughly 9,000 housing units and operates in 11 states, with about 1,500 units in development in New York City.
Fairstead’s national footprint is larger, with about 25,000 units across 28 states, according to company materials. The two firms now occupy adjacent corners of the affordable housing market, with Tredway expanding into deals involving public housing preservation, Section 8 communities, and tax-credit projects.
What happens next
The Delaware court still has to determine the size of any award owed to Blodgett. Counsel for Fairstead has signaled that further proceedings are likely. Michael Carlinsky, head of complex litigation at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, told The Real Deal that “this litigation has been ongoing for years, and unfortunately may take several more years before it is resolved,” citing potential remedies and appeals.
For now, the ruling is the most significant marker in a public dispute that has shadowed Blodgett since 2022 and produced a series of bruising headlines along the way. The Delaware decision shifts the record. The court has affirmed that the founder who built the affordable housing arm of Fairstead was entitled to the equity that came with it.
Source: The Real Deal, May 14, 2026.