There was a contract that obligated Northwest to pay Cognate $500k p/month to keep everything in a state of readiness to move forward… and the halt really messed all that up for Northwest, because for some time, the company thought that the trial would be restarted. And then there was the Direct P2 trial that, had the company had the funds, would have been restarted (justified keeping true to the existing contract) … but alas, that too, was not picked back up as there wasn’t enough money to do so. And it was that unfortunate agreement that ended up hurting Northwest with regards to the Cognate agreement. However, so much of the later payments for those payables were made in stock (and options), and not cash (not particularly helpful to Cognate, except when it came to the management buyout). And eventually, to settle everything up, Cognate did return to the company a considerable number of those shares (and let 30m options lapse).
IMO, it was an unfortunate set of unanticipated circumstances that led to the appearance that things weren’t exactly fair to retail in terms of share dilution. But when taking a step back, I think it could be argued Cognate also lost as well, as did LP, in addition to shareholders.