Delaware chancery court judge William Chandler kicked out HP’s motion to dismiss director Walter Hewlett’s lawsuit against the company, the one charging HP swung 17 million votes at the last minute with threats to cancel a business deal with institutional shareholder Deustche Asset Management. Tossing out the Deustche votes may kill the merger, but that won’t change the business decision that 3000 division general manager Winston Prather made to end HP’s involvement with the server. A merger failure might have repercussions in the rest of HP, however, since its CEO Carly Fiorina said merging with Compaq is the only way that HP can continue to grow. While analysts moaned that the delay was hurting HP’s competition against Sun, Dell and IBM the judge approved a three-day trial starting April 23 on the suit.

Meanwhile, Computerworld reported that an investment advisor has accused HP of failing to tell investors about its relationships with Warburg Pincus, LLC, an investment company which is a significant financial backer of the ISS independent stock analysis firm. ISS recommended that major investment firms vote millions of shares in favor of the merger. The advisor said ISS might not be so independent — since ISS has three Warbug Pincus officers on its board, people who represent a company that has been pumping hundreds of millions of dollars of investments alongside HP in partnerships around BEA Systems, WebGain and Eontec.