Last Tuesday, new SEC Chairman Mary Jo White said at The Wall Street Journal’s annual CFO Network Event that the SEC “in certain cases” will seek admissions of liability as part of settlements. The statement made headlines, and for good reason: for decades, the SEC has allowed settling defendants to neither admit nor deny

The recurring and pervasive problem of flawed confidential witness (“CW”) allegations tops my list of the key issues in securities class action litigation.*  I don’t mean just notorious situations such as those recently at issue in the Lockheed, SunTrust, and Boeing securities class actions – which I discussed in an earlier post and

In our post in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans, we concluded that rather than being a new threat to the defense of securities class actions, Amgen basically endorsed the status quo: In holding that plaintiffs do not need to establish that allegedly false statements

Plaintiffs’ lawyers are facing intense judicial scrutiny of problems with their use of “confidential witnesses” (“CWs”) in the Lockheed Martin and SunTrust securities class actions.  Courts have recently addressed similar CW problems in two other high-profile securities class actions, Sears Holdings (affirmed by the Second Circuit) and Boeing.

Courts need to scrutinize CWs more closely in deciding motions to dismiss – not just in post-denial motions for reconsideration or summary judgment following CW discovery.  After discussing the two current cases, I propose two modest reforms.

Belmont Holdings v. SunTrust Banks

In SunTrust, the court denied defendants’ motions to dismiss the First Amended Complaint (“FAC”), based primarily on purported claims from a CW, Mr. Trapani, that the individual defendants knew that certain financial reporting at the end of 2007 was false.*  Mr. Trapani left SunTrust in August 2007, but the FAC alleged that Mr. Trapani worked at SunTrust from “2005 through 2007” and contained several references to information he provided concerning knowledge “throughout 2007.”  During the motion to dismiss process, SunTrust asserted that Mr. Trapani left SunTrust in August 2007.  The court acknowledged the assertion but expressly left  the issue for later, stating it “must assume Trapani had personal knowledge” and if he does not, “the Court will consider later whether these allegations support a violation of the pleading standards under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”

Defendants moved for reconsideration based on declarations from Mr. Trapani that he left SunTrust in August 2007, knew nothing about the challenged financial reporting thereafter, and never told plaintiffs’ investigator that he discussed the individual defendants’ knowledge of SunTrust’s financial reporting thereafter.  Based on Mr. Trapani’s declarations, the court reconsidered its motion to dismiss order and dismissed the action.  The court “reluctantly” decided against sanctions because it appeared that notes from plaintiffs’ investigator, Ms. Torres, supported the FAC’s allegations based on Mr. Trapani.

So it appeared that plaintiffs’ counsel was off the hook.  But they might not be.  Ms. Torres contacted the court to say she was concerned about the accuracy of plaintiffs’ counsel’s arguments against sanctions.  In particular, she “stated that she had information she wished to share with the Court, including that Plaintiff’s counsel were involved in the interviews of Mr. Trapani and that, in those interviews, Mr. Trapani made clear that he did not have any knowledge after August 2007 ….”

The court has set a hearing for November 9, 2012 to hear more from Ms. Torres, her firm, and the parties.  “The Court will, after the proceeding, evaluate whether further inquiry or action is required.”

City of Pontiac General Employees’ Retirement System v. Lockheed Martin 

In Lockheed, Judge Rakoff denied defendants’ motion to dismiss.  Discovery commenced.  Discovery of the CWs revealed two categories of problems:  (1) several CWs disputed telling plaintiffs’ investigator the facts the complaint attributed to them; and (2) certain of the CW allegations were not based on the CWs’ personal knowledge because the information they provided was outside of their employment dates and/or job responsibilities.  Defendants moved for summary judgment, pointing out the flaws with the CW allegations on which Judge Rakoff relied in denying defendants’ motion to dismiss.

On October 1, 2012, Judge Rakoff held a day-long evidentiary hearing to determine “who the heck tried to pull a fraud on this court.”  The 218-page hearing transcript allows a rare look into the securities-class-action-complaint-preparation kitchen.  Plaintiffs and defendants submitted post-hearing briefs that slice and dice the complaint’s allegations and evidence revealed during discovery and during the October 1 hearing.  At the hearing’s conclusion, Judge Rakoff offered some tentative thoughts about the witnesses’ credibility.  He remarked that some CWs were credible and others were not, and that plaintiffs’ investigator was credible “on the whole.”

For more background, see here.

Continue Reading Confidential Witness Hearings in SunTrust and Lockheed Martin Demonstrate Need for Reforms

The appeal of Judge Rakoff’s rejection of the settlement between the SEC and Citigroup is spectacular theater.  Behind the scenes, however, is a highly serious issue: does a federal district judge have the power, as a condition to approving a consent judgment, to require an admission of liability or to otherwise impose collateral estoppel effects.

The briefing is complete.  I commend it to you (if you have a couple of hours to spare); it is excellent and entertaining.  Oral argument has been requested but not scheduled.

Here’s some background.  The SEC investigated Citigroup’s marketing of collateralized debt obligations.  The SEC then filed a complaint alleging non-scienter violations of the Securities Act.  The same day, the SEC also filed a proposed consent judgment, enjoining violations of the law, ordering business reforms, and requiring the company to pay $285 million.  As part of the consent judgment, Citigroup did not admit or deny the complaint’s allegations.  Judge Rakoff held a hearing to determine “whether the proposed judgment is fair, reasonable, adequate, and in the public interest.”  In advance, the court posed nine questions, which the parties answered in detail.  Judge Rakoff rejected the consent judgment.

The rejection order rested, in part, on the court’s determination that any consent judgment that is not supported by “proven or acknowledged facts” would not serve the public interest because:

  • the public would not know the “truth in a matter of obvious public importance”, and
  • private litigants would not be able to use the consent judgment to pursue claims because it would have “no evidentiary value and no collateral estoppel effect”.

The SEC and Citigroup appealed, and sought an order staying the rejection order pending appeal.  A panel of the Second Circuit granted the motion, finding that the SEC and Citigroup have a strong likelihood of success on appeal, and rejecting the district court’s holding that a consent judgment may be approved only if “liability has been conceded or proved and is embodied in the judgment.”

The parties then filed appeal briefs.  One of the briefs is from pro bono counsel appointed to represent Judge Rakoff.Continue Reading Judge Rakoff’s Rejection of SEC-Citigroup Settlement: Second Circuit to Decide Power of Court to Condition Consent Judgment on Admission of Liability

Two recent cases from the Southern District of New York discussed the application of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Janus to pleading corporate scienter in Reform Act cases.  Judge Pauley, in Pennsylvania Public School Employee’s Retirement System v. Bank of America Corporation, came to the conclusion that Janus does not inform the pleading of corporate scienter, although perhaps only on procedural grounds.  Judge Sullivan in In re UBS AG Securities Litigation, came to a similar result, while concluding that Janus put an end to the “group pleading doctrine.”  The cases highlight the difficulties courts face, on a motion to dismiss, in applying tests for scienter, when the issue is not the scienter of an individual defendant, but the scienter of a corporate defendant.  As a practical matter, that may mean that motions to dismiss for failure to adequately plead scienter of a corporate defendant may be more difficult to obtain.

Despite the view of some that “corporations are people too,” corporations cannot literally speak or think, and cannot therefore literally make a false statement or form an intent to defraud.  They speak and think only through their agents.  In the typical securities case, the individual director or officer defendants are the “agents” who both make a statement and allegedly know of its falsity.  But what of the case where the pleadings do not adequately allege that the individual defendants spoke with the requisite scienter, can the pleadings still demonstrate that the corporate defendant had any intent to defraud?

The Second Circuit, in Teamster’s Local 455 Freight Persian Fund v. Dynex Capital Inc.  observed that “it is possible to raise the required inference [of corporate scienter] without doing so with regard to a specific individual defendant.”  And in a well-known hypothetical, the Seventh Circuit, on remand, following the Supreme Court’s decision in Tellabs, hypothesized:

Suppose General Motors announced that it had sold one million SUVs in 2006 and the actual number was zero.  There would be a strong inference of corporate scienter, since so dramatic an announcement would have been approved by corporate officials sufficiently knowledgeable about the company to know that the announcement was false.

Inferring corporate scienter makes some sense in such a situation because what the court is really inferring is that someone who can be held responsible for making the statement knew that it was false.  This makes the corporate scienter inquiry very similar to the “core operations” inference, under which, courts can infer scienter in certain situations involving such blatant falsity that it would be “absurd to suggest” that management was without knowledge of the matter.Continue Reading Pleading Corporate Scienter: Does Janus Inform the Analysis?