Discussion of Key Issues in Securities & Governance Litigation
Following is an article we wrote for Law360, which gave us permission to republish it here:
The coming year promises to be a pivotal one in the world of securities and corporate governance litigation. In particular, there are five developing issues we are watching that have the greatest potential to significantly increase or decrease the…
Does Item 303 of Regulation S-K matter in private securities litigation? In Stratte-McClure v. Morgan Stanley, 776 F.3d 94 (2nd Cir. 2015), the Second Circuit held that Item 303 imposes a duty to disclose for purposes of Section 10(b), meaning that the omission of information required by Item 303 can provide the basis for…
This year will be remembered as the year of the Super Bowl of securities litigation, Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (“Halliburton II”), 134 S. Ct. 2398 (2014), the case that finally gave the Supreme Court the opportunity to overrule the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance, established in 1988 in Basic v.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. (Halliburton II) may well have the lowest impact-to-fanfare ratio of any Supreme Court securities decision. Despite the social-media-fueled frenzy within the securities bar leading up to the decision, the Court’s decision will effect little change in class certification law and practice…
Even the most experienced securities defense attorneys regularly summarize Rule 10b-5(b) as creating a cause of action for “false or misleading statements and omissions of material fact.” Courts –including the Supreme Court – routinely use the same shorthand. When I was a new securities litigation defense attorney, one of the first things that I learned…
At long last, the United States Supreme Court is going to address the viability and/or prerequisites of the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance established by the Court in 1988 in Basic v. Levinson. Securities litigators, on both sides of the aisle, are understandably anxious, because our entire industry is about to change – either a…
I recently had occasion to review a number of motion-to-dismiss rulings, including some in which denial of the motion seemed to be an easy call. I’ve since been mulling over whether there are circumstances in which it would be strategically advantageous not to make a motion to dismiss in a Reform Act case, or a…
On April 16, 2013, Law360 featured me in its Q&A series.
In the article, I address two critical economic issues in securities litigation defense: containing escalating defense costs, and managing electronic document review. I also discuss the Supreme Court’s Amgen decision, a securities litigation defense lawyer who impressed me, a case that helped launch…
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…
The Supreme Court released its anxiously awaited decision in Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans yesterday. On the face of the decision, it was a loss for defendants in that case, and for companies everywhere that are forced to defend themselves against securities class action lawsuits – as the Court found that plaintiffs do not…