On April 4, 2013, in the Allergan decision, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the Court of Chancery’s ruling last year that the dismissal of a shareholder derivative action in California did not preclude other stockholders from bringing the same corporate claim in Delaware.  The Delaware Supreme Court’s decision was based on a Constitutional Full Faith and Credit analysis.

The Court of Chancery, in contrast, had looked to Delaware’s internal affairs doctrine and demand futility requirement, which the Supreme Court said was error.  Central to the Court of Chancery’s analysis was a presumption that the California plaintiffs provided inadequate representation because they did not conduct a Section 220 books and records inspection before filing.  However, the Supreme Court rejected this “‘fast filer’ irrebuttable presumption of inadequacy,” holding that plaintiffs who fail to do a Section 220 action are not necessarily inadequate.

The commentary about the Delaware Supreme Court’s decision understandably has focused on the Full Faith and Credit analysis and the Supreme Court’s apparent rejection of a Delaware-centric attitude toward shareholder litigation involving Delaware corporations.  Defense lawyers have lauded the decision as a step towards solving the problem of multi-jurisdictional shareholder litigation.

In my opinion, however, the more important and enduring feature of the decision is the Delaware Supreme Court’s rejection of the “fast filer” presumption of inadequacy.  For a further discussion of the fast-filer issue, please see my prior post on the Allergan and Hecla Mining Court of Chancery decisions.  For a helpful discussion of the Allergan Delaware Supreme Court decision, please see Kevin LaCroix’s blog, The D&O Diary.

Upholding the Court of Chancery’s presumption against fast-filers would have strongly encouraged, if not effectively required, shareholders to make a Section 220 demand before filing a derivative action.  Such a rule inevitably would have reduced the number of shareholder cases filed, because plaintiffs’ counsel would have had to be more selective about the cases in which it invested the time and money to investigate.  Thus, the Delaware Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to actually reduce the number of shareholder derivative actions – especially those without merit.   On the other hand, as I wrote in my prior post, a 220 requirement would make cases that are filed more virulent, because they would be more difficult to dispose of on a motion to dismiss.

Leaving the system as is, however, means that stockholders will continue to file a lot of bad cases – in Delaware and elsewhere, and sometimes in multiple places.  And the root cause of the multi-jurisdictional shareholder litigation problem is more this reflexive, thoughtless filing of meritless cases than the fact that they are filed in multiple jurisdictions.  The Delaware Supreme Court thus passed up an opportunity to craft a rule that would have had profound impact on all shareholder litigation, including merger cases.

But I doubt that the Full Faith and Credit aspect of the decision in Allergan will have a significant impact on merger litigation, the most prolific and meritless type of shareholder litigation.  This is so for two reasons.

First, Allergan was a shareholder derivative action concerning the board’s alleged failure to prevent an off-label marketing problem, asserting the derivative claim that the corporation was damaged by the board’s breaches of fiduciary duties.  Most merger cases are filed as class actions asserting shareholders’ direct claims, not as derivative actions asserting corporate claims.  The collateral estoppel analysis in Allergan was dependent upon a determination of privity that is unique to the context of a shareholder derivative action.  Thus, Allergan’s collateral estoppel analysis doesn’t break new ground regarding merger class actions, and therefore would have no direct effect on most merger litigation.

Second, few merger cases are litigated to dispositive decisions that a Delaware court is even asked to respect.  The vast majority of them settle long before that point.  As a result, there has hardly been a wave of Delaware decisions failing to honor another state’s dismissal of a merger case.  Indeed, one of the central problems with merger litigation is the fact that there are too few decisions on the merits.  In a prior post on merger litigation, I discuss some of the reasons why there is too little merits litigation in merger cases.

A rule requiring stockholders to use Section 220 would be a mixed bag – as discussed above, there may be fewer cases, but those that remained would be harder to dispose of on a motion to dismiss.  But the Delaware Supreme Court’s rejection of such a rule was a bit of a letdown.  Such a presumption against fast filers, even if fashioned strictly in the context of derivative actions, would likely have had a domino effect, and also led to greater investigation by stockholders before filing merger class actions.  That would have had a positive impact; even a little more investigation would be better than the current system of no investigation at all.

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 discuss further below.  I also mean the garden-variety inaccuracies that are present in a great many cases.

After catching readers up on what has happened in Lockheed, SunTrust, and Boeing since my prior CW post, I’ll discuss why fixing this problem is so crucial, and then propose a solution.  For a useful survey of CW decisions, see Bryan House, “The Fact Pattern Behind the Boeing Class Action Grounding,” Law360 (April 2, 2013).

Update on Lockheed, SunTrust, and Boeing

City of Pontiac General Employees’ Retirement System v. Lockheed Martin (S.D.N.Y. Case No. 11 CV 5026 (JSR)).  In Lockheed, Judge Jed Rakoff denied defendants’ motion to dismiss.  875 F. Supp. 2d 359 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).  During discovery, several CWs disputed telling the investigator for plaintiffs’ counsel (Robbins Geller) the facts the complaint attributed to them, and discovery revealed that certain of the CW allegations were not based on the CWs’ personal knowledge.  Defendants moved for summary judgment, pointing out the flaws in 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.”  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.”  He asked for briefing by the parties on the issues raised at the hearing.

Following the parties’ post-hearing submissions, Judge Rakoff issued a summary order denying defendants’ summary judgment motion, and promised a longer order.  The fact of the denial indicated that, to some extent, Judge Rakoff rejected defendants’ CW challenges, though we’ll never know his findings, because the case settled before he issued his longer order.

Belmont Holdings v. SunTrust Banks (N.D. Ga., Case No. 1:09-cv-01185-WSD).  In SunTrust, Judge William Duffey denied defendants’ motions to dismiss, primarily because of allegations based on information provided by a CW, Scott Trapani, indicating that defendants knew SunTrust’s reserves were understated throughout 2007.  During the motion-to-dismiss process, defendants pointed out that Mr. Trapani left SunTrust in August 2007, and therefore was not in a position to comment about the reserves throughout the year, but the court ruled it would leave that issue for discovery.

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 the investigator for plaintiffs’ counsel (again Robbins Geller) 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, Desiree Torres, supported the FAC’s allegations related to Mr. Trapani.

Ms. Torres later contacted the court and indicated that she was concerned with the accuracy of information plaintiffs’ counsel submitted in their argument against sanctions.  The court held a hearing to hear from Ms. Torres, her firm, and the parties, including Robbins Geller.  Ms. Torres indicated that she had quit her job over the situation.  She said her primary concerns were that, in her view, the submissions incorrectly suggested that plaintiffs’ counsel was not part of interviews of Mr. Trapani in which he indicated that he left SunTrust in August 2007, and that plaintiffs’ allegations inaccurately portrayed Mr. Trapani’s knowledge of matters after August 2007.

At the hearing, Robbins Geller examined Ms. Torres in detail about the interviews of Mr. Trapani and plaintiffs’ pleadings.  If you are a securities litigation geek, you’ll find the transcript fascinating.  In a nutshell, the problem seems to have been caused by a combination of vagueness in what Mr. Trapani said he knew after August 2007, which apparently was occasioned in part by his unwillingness to provide certain details to plaintiffs’ counsel and their investigators, and plaintiffs’ counsel’s interpretation, inferences, and extrapolation of the information he did provide – and then plaintiffs’ counsel’s failure to correct their prior allegations and argument once the scope of Mr. Trapani’s knowledge became clearer.

The court took the matter under advisement, and in a post-hearing order did not impose Rule 11 sanctions:

After hearing testimony and argument at the hearing, the Court concludes that, while not in keeping with the conduct expected of attorneys practicing before this Court, Plaintiff’s counsel’s actions in this matter did not constitute an actionable violation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court remains troubled by the conduct of Plaintiff’s counsel in failing to correct representations made in their pleadings or to notify the Court of them immediately after it became apparent that Trapani did not have knowledge after August 2007 of Defendants’ conduct or beliefs regarding the [reserves]. The decision not to correct the record after counsel became aware of the Court’s reliance on Plaintiff’s representations is perplexing and disappointing. Had Plaintiff’s counsel done so, Ms. Torres likely would not have felt compelled to contact the Court after reading the August 28th Order based on her understanding of the manner in which the Court interpreted the information that was provided to it by Plaintiff’s counsel.

City of Livonia v. Boeing (N.D. Ill., Case NO. 09 C 7143; 7th Cir. Case Nos. 12-1899, 12-2009).  On the basis of allegations based on information allegedly obtained from a CW, Bishnujee Singh, the court denied defendants’ motion to dismiss.  Boeing’s investigation revealed that plaintiffs’ allegations based on Mr. Singh were incorrect, including the allegations that he was employed by Boeing (he was not; he was employed by a contractor of Boeing), or highly improbable, including the allegation that he communicated with senior management.  Boeing took his deposition.  He denied almost everything the investigator for plaintiffs’ counsel (again Robbins Geller) had attributed to him.

Defendants filed a motion for reconsideration of the court’s order denying their motion to dismiss.  The district court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint.  Defendants didn’t file a motion for Rule 11 sanctions, and the court didn’t impose them on its own.

Plaintiffs moved for relief from that order on various grounds, including assertions that the documents Boeing produced confirmed the information Mr. Singh provided, and that Mr. Singh’s recantation was caused by his desire to work directly for Boeing.  In support of their recantation theory, plaintiffs cited an email from Mr. Singh to senior Boeing employees, which plaintiffs characterized as follows:

Singh’s communications with Boeing employees also demonstrate his motive to change his story. He actively sought work at Boeing. Pl. Br. at 9, 13. On the very day of his deposition, Singh wrote directly to Michael Denton, who he had identified in his meeting with the investigator as the Vice President of Engineering for the 787 Program, and Jim Albaugh, defendant Carson’s replacement at Boeing, noting that he was “following up” with them, and stating that he deserved “[a]t least” a “THANK YOU!” for “trying my best to help in all possible ways to Boeing group in this disposition [sic] case by denying knowledge of the facts.” Pl. Br. at 4; Dkt. No. 173, Ex. 1. Eight days later, Singh filed another application for work at Boeing.

The Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Richard Posner, affirmed the dismissal, and remanded the case to the district court to address plaintiffs’ counsel’s compliance with Rule 11, which Judge Posner noted the Reform Act requires even without a motion by defendants.  2013 WL 1197791 (7th Cir. March 26, 2013).  Judge Posner noted that the evidence suggested that plaintiffs’ counsel’s investigator had “qualms” about the information Mr. Singh provided, and that the failure of some of the evidence to check out “should have been a red flag.”  Judge Posner’s criticism of plaintiffs’ counsel was blistering:

Their failure to inquire further puts one in mind of ostrich tactics—of failing to inquire for fear that the inquiry might reveal stronger evidence of their scienter regarding the authenticity of the confidential source than the flimsy evidence of scienter they were able to marshal against Boeing. Representations in a filing in a federal district court that are not grounded in an “inquiry reasonable under the circumstances” or that are unlikely to “have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery” violate Rules 11(b) and 11(b)(3).

The plaintiffs’ law firm–Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP–was criticized for misleading allegations, concerning confidential sources, made to stave off dismissal of a securities-fraud case much like this one, in Belmont Holdings Corp. v. SunTrust Banks, Inc., No. 1:09-cv1185-WSD, 2012 WL 4096146 at *16-18 (N.D.Ga. Aug. 28, 2012).  The firm is described in two other reported cases as having engaged in similar misconduct: Camp v. Sears Holdings Corp., 371 Fed. Appx. 212, 216-17 (2d Cir.2010); Applestein v. Medivation, Inc., 861 F.Supp.2d 1030, 1037-39 (N.D.Cal.2012). Recidivism is relevant in assessing sanctions.  Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 936 (7th Cir. 2003).

 The Importance of Solving the Confidential-Witness Problem

 

Obviously, we can’t keep having problems like those at issue in these three cases.  Although these cases have received significant attention because of the prominence of the companies and judges, as well as some extreme facts (e.g. Ms. Torres contacting the court and quitting her job), problems with CW allegations – from disagreement about information attributed to them, to vagueness and ambiguity in the complaint’s descriptions and allegations – exist in many cases.  Finding a solution is important, for two main reasons.

First and foremost, CW allegations based on inaccurate information result in injustice; insufficient complaints aren’t dismissed.  Yet defendants are procedurally limited in their ability to present evidence demonstrating inaccuracies unless and until their motion to dismiss is denied.   This is so because the Reform Act’s stay of discovery during the motion to dismiss process applies to both plaintiffs’ and defendants’ discovery.  So, even if the defendants know that the plaintiffs have completely misstated what a CW told plaintiffs’ counsel/investigator – indeed, even if a purported CW claims not to have spoken with the plaintiffs at all – defendants cannot take discovery to establish such facts without court permission.  And a decision to seek court permission to conduct discovery can be tricky; there’s a risk that discovery will mushroom, and the defendants will lose the benefits of the stay.

Moreover, even if discovery demonstrates inaccuracies in the complaint, there is no completely satisfactory procedural mechanism for raising the issue before the court decides the motion to dismiss.  A Rule 11 motion is the most procedurally suitable procedure, but it is a very serious one, and the defendants rightly approach it with caution, since it can backfire in the form of an angry judge and/or an inefficiently unworkable relationship between the lawyers.  A Rule 12(f) motion to strike isn’t available in at least some courts, and is frowned upon by some others.  And defendants can submit factual information on a motion to dismiss only in limited circumstances.

So, defendants often make the best motion-to-dismiss arguments they can and then address the CW problems after the motion to dismiss is denied.  But, at that point, it’s too often late to effectively address the inaccurate CW allegations, because the case is in discovery, and the CW problems can fade into one of the myriad issues to be sorted out in discovery.

Second, I believe the greatest risk to the Reform Act’s protections has always been legislative backlash over a perception that the Reform Act is unfair to investors.  The Reform Act’s heavy pleading burdens have caused plaintiffs’ counsel to seek out former employees and others to provide internal information.  The investigative process is often difficult and is ethically tricky, and the information it generates can be lousy.  This is so even if plaintiffs’ counsel and their investigators act in good faith – information can be misunderstood, misinterpreted, and/or misconstrued by the time it is conveyed from one person to the next to the next to the next.  And, to further complicate matters, CWs sometimes recant, or even deny that they made their previous statements.

The result is an unseemly game of he-said/she-said between CWs and plaintiffs’ counsel, in which the referee is ultimately an Article III judge.

If Robbins Geller avoids sanctions in Boeing, it will be major, major news, especially given Judge Posner’s scathing criticism.  I don’t predict that there would be an outpouring of sympathy for Robbins Geller.  But I do believe that a decision not to impose sanctions, along with the outcomes of Lockheed and SunTrust, would prompt scrutiny by commentators and possibly legislators: how could there have been three cases in just the last year that turned from allegations of serious misconduct against plaintiffs’ counsel – accompanied by preliminary but harsh criticism from courts – to conduct the courts ultimately found did not violate Rule 11?

An examination of these CW hearings would necessarily involve a discussion of the Reform Act’s heightened pleading standards; they are the reason plaintiffs’ counsel turns to CWs.  Indeed, in Lockheed, Judge Rakoff’s concluding remarks noted that extreme pleading standards involve “dangers” – for example, the “difficulties plaintiffs have in getting information that they know they’re going to have to get to meet the very high standard that the Supreme Court has now imposed on plaintiffs in these cases.”

It would be highly unfortunate, however, if there were serious discussion about reforming the Reform Act’s pleading standards or other protections.  The CW problem can be solved through simpler means that do not undermine the Reform Act’s protections, which have created a system of securities litigation that is vastly superior to the one the Reform Act reformed.

Some Suggested Reforms to the CW Process

An effective solution to the CW problem could be achieved with three reforms:

First, plaintiffs’ counsel should be required to obtain from each confidential witness a declaration and/or a certification that he or she has read the complaint and agrees with the description of the information he or she provided.  This simple requirement would prevent most CW problems, and make the ones that do arise much easier to resolve.  Although some witnesses may balk at providing a declaration, few legitimate witnesses with accurate information to provide would hesitate to certify the accuracy of the relevant portions of the complaint – indeed, most would want to do so, to avoid the hassles that misunderstandings can cause.

Second, plaintiffs should be required to precisely describe, at a minimum, the following information for each CW: (1) employment dates – by day, month, and year; (2) employment responsibilities – including job title, job description, and a detailed list of job responsibilities, and the substance and exact date of any changes; and (3) how the CW knows the information the complaint alleges. There can be no reasonable objection to CWs providing these facts. With regard to employment information, CWs know it precisely and, if they don’t recall precisely, they have documents that reflect it. With regard to the basis of knowledge, if the CWs can’t recall the basis, there’s no good reason to credit the other information the complaint alleges. Indeed, under current law, vagueness in these three areas undermines the CW allegations.

Third, defendants should be allowed to seek limited discovery, without risk to their discovery-stay rights, and to offer evidence to address significant inaccuracies before the motion to dismiss, through a motion to strike the inaccurate allegations – or, alternatively, during the motion-to-dismiss process itself, without converting the motion to a summary judgment motion.  Having a designated process for raising these concerns would help attorneys and the judge to navigate a moderate middle course between the two extremes that are pervasive today – either allowing inaccurate allegations to survive through a motion to dismiss, or taking the dramatic step of filing a Rule 11 motion against plaintiffs’ counsel.  Defendants should not be required to resort to Rule 11 to raise these issues, though they should be permitted to use Rule 11 if the conduct of plaintiffs’ counsel makes it the most appropriate course of action.

These three measures would have prevented the problems at issue in Lockheed, SunTrust, and Boeing.  For example:

  • If the CWs in Lockheed had provided declarations or certifications, Judge Rakoff would not have had to hold a day-long hearing to determine whether the CWs, in fact, told plaintiffs’ counsel’s investigator the information alleged in the complaint.
  • If plaintiffs’ counsel in SunTrust were required to more precisely allege Mr. Trapani’s employment dates, the court and parties could have avoided the hassle and spectacle of the hearing to settle this basic issue.
  • In all three cases, it would have been more efficient and less costly if defendants had an effective means of raising these concerns before the motion to dismiss, or, at the very least, during the motion-to-dismiss process.

These reforms would not only prevent unseemly showdowns – between defense counsel and plaintiffs’ counsel, or among plaintiffs’ counsel, their CWs and their investigators.  They would make all securities class action complaints more factually accurate and thus make the outcomes more just – and would help to avoid continued actions against plaintiffs’ counsel, which could eventually cause Congress to consider reforming the Reform Act.

 

* I do not include shareholder challenges to mergers in the category of “securities class actions.”  Merger cases present the biggest issue facing shareholder litigation in general:  a system that not only allows, but encourages, meritless shareholder challenges.  See here for my post on suggested reforms in that area.

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 were material to the market before they can gain class certification, the Amgen Court reinforced the rule that is already followed in most courts.  At the same time, we promised to dive deeper in a future post, to discuss the effect of Amgen in those circuits that had previously entertained disputes over materiality in determining whether to certify a class.

This was a weighty task.  In the absence of clear guidance from the Supreme Court, the law on class certification has developed in myriad, complex, and contradictory ways across the circuit courts. The precise legal effect of the Amgen decision will therefore vary from one circuit to the next, as the law in many circuits has not been fully developed, and other circuits have developed distinct doctrines in their effort to find a principled way to implement the fraud-on-the-market presumption from Basic v. Levinson.  Yet a survey of these circuit court decisions, and the way that they have been interpreted in the district courts, merely reinforces our conclusion that Amgen will have relatively little negative practical impact on defendants – in any jurisdiction.  Far from being a “crushing blow” to the defense bar that will “make it easier” for plaintiffs to maintain securities class actions, as many commentators have claimed, the Amgen decision seems to close very few strategic doors to the defense, no matter where a case is litigated.

This is true for three primary reasons.  First, most of the arguments that defendants have made to dispute materiality at class certification are the same as arguments that can be made – and often are, with greater success – on a motion to dismiss, because they challenge fundamental flaws in the complaint that point to plaintiffs’ inability to make sufficient allegations of falsity and loss causation.  Second, the only circuit that required plaintiffs to “prove” materiality before a class would be certified was the Fifth Circuit, whose holdings in this regard had already been largely neutralized by the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton.  Finally, in those circuits that had allowed defendants a chance to rebut materiality and thus defeat class certification – in particular, the Second and Third Circuits – the bar was already set so high that this opportunity seemed to be largely illusory.

As an initial matter, it is necessary to identify those circuits that have holdings which are incompatible with the Amgen opinion.  While many circuit courts have yet to grapple explicitly with the issue, the Amgen ruling is in line with the approach articulated by the Ninth Circuit (see that court’s decision in Amgen, 660 F.3d 1170 (9th Cir. 2011)) and the Seventh Circuit (see Schleicher v. Wendt, 618 F.3d 679, 687 (2010)), and the emerging doctrine of the First Circuit (see, e.g., In re Boston Scientific Corp., 604 F. Supp.2d 275 (D. Mass. 2009)) and the Fourth Circuit (see, e.g., In re Red Hat, Inc., Sec. Litig., 261 F.R.D. 83 (E.D. N.C. 2009)).  On the other hand, as discussed below, Amgen raises questions when examined in connection with the extreme approach formerly taken by the Fifth Circuit (see Oscar Private Equity Investments v. Allegiance Telecom, Inc., 487 F.3d 261, 267 (5th Cir. 2007)) as well as the more moderate doctrines articulated by the Second Circuit (see In re Salomon Analyst Metromedia Litigation, 544 F.3d 474, 484 (2d Cir. 2008)) and the Third Circuit (see In re DVI, Inc. Securities Litigation, 639 F. 3d 623, 631 (3d Cir. 2011)).

Until 2011, the Fifth Circuit took the most aggressive approach toward class certification, requiring not only proof that an alleged misstatement “actually moved” the market in order to invoke the fraud-on-the-market presumption, but also requiring plaintiffs to prove loss causation.  This doctrine was summarily rejected by a unanimous Supreme Court in Halliburton, which found that the requirement that plaintiffs prove loss causation to gain class certification was “not justified by Basic or its logic.”  (See 131 S.Ct. 2179 (2011)). It is not clear what, if anything, remained of the Fifth Circuit’s doctrine after Halliburton.  Arguably, a requirement survived that plaintiffs make a showing prior to class certification that either the misrepresentation or the corrective disclosure had an impact on stock price, but that is unclear, because the Fifth Circuit’s justification for this requirement was closely tied to its demand that plaintiffs prove loss causation – and neither the Fifth Circuit nor its district courts have made rulings on this basis since the Halliburton decision.

By contrast, the rule in the Second Circuit survived Halliburton, but was overturned by Amgen. According to the Second Circuit, plaintiffs were required to make “some showing” of materiality in order to trigger the fraud-on-the-market presumption, either through showing an impact of information on the stock price, or simply by arguing that there was a “substantial likelihood” that the misrepresented or omitted information “would have been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the total mix of information made available.” (See Salomon, 544 F.3d at 485).  At that point, the burden shifted to the defendants to rebut the presumption of reliance, with evidence that “severs the link” between the alleged misrepresentation and the price of the stock.

Similarly, the Third Circuit ruled in 2011 that district courts may consider evidence to rebut the presumption of reliance, and thereby defeat class certification.  The court reasoned that evidence that a corrective disclosure did not affect the market price could defeat class certification in one of two ways.  If the statement was material, it could show that the market was not efficient in absorbing information (an acknowledged prerequisite to the Basic presumption).  On the other hand, if the market was efficient but the corrective disclosure did not affect the stock price, the Third Circuit held that it could demonstrate that the challenged statement was immaterial as a matter of law. (See In re DVI, 639 F. 3d at 638).

Before Halliburton, the Fifth Circuit’s standard undoubtedly made it difficult for plaintiffs to gain class certification – not only because loss causation was explicitly incorporated into the class certification inquiry, but because plaintiffs bore the burden of proving loss causation before certification was granted.  As noted above, much or all of this hurdle was removed by Halliburton, leaving little or nothing for Amgen to resolve.  By contrast, the standard used by in the Second and Third Circuits placed the burden on the defendants to rebut the presumption of materiality.  Although this gave defendants the opportunity to present evidence about materiality, including expert testimony, the courts implementing this standard generally found that the defendants had failed to meet their burden, and granted class certification despite this evidence.  In ruling that defendants could not present evidence to rebut materiality until summary judgment or trial, the Amgen Court eliminated the possibility that this materiality evidence will be considered at the class certification stage – but this ruling will likely have little practical effect in the Second and Third Circuits, where that opportunity did not seem to give defendants any real advantage.

What is most striking in the pre-Amgen cases that considered materiality on class certification was that nearly all of the arguments that defendants advanced could have been advanced – and often, already had been advanced – at the motion-to-dismiss stage.  If the courts had already accepted these arguments on a motion to dismiss, in most cases the issue would not have reached class certification.  On the other hand, if the courts had already rejected these contentions once at the motion-to-dismiss stage, they did not seem to be any more willing to accept them when they were reframed on class certification.  For example, defendants in these cases sought to defeat materiality by contending that the defendant company had disclosed the truth to the market, rendering the allegedly false statement material.  This argument is easily recast, especially in the case of alleged omissions, to contend that plaintiffs failed to adequately allege of the existence of a false or misleading statement in the first place. Similarly, at class certification, defendants advanced arguments that the plaintiffs had failed to connect the alleged misstatements with any corrective disclosure that revealed the truth to the market, or that they were unable to point to a drop in the stock price following the corrective disclosure – failures that the courts already routinely recognize as fatal to adequate pleading of loss causation, which can be adjudicated on motions to dismiss.

Indeed, the only arguments advanced by defendants in these cases that were unique to the class certification procedure were those that used expert testimony to assert that a price drop was not due to an alleged corrective disclosure, but rather to other negative information that was released simultaneously, or general adverse market conditions.  These contentions involved difficult factual distinctions that the district courts were reluctant to make, particularly in the Second Circuit, where the defendants carried the burden of disproving materiality.

In sum, the Amgen decision seems to foreclose very little in terms of defense strategy.  It may eliminate the use of expert testimony regarding materiality on class certification motions – although such testimony can still be relevant regarding the “efficiency” of the market for the company’s stock.  And it will likely foreclose defendants’ efforts to contend, based largely on expert testimony, that a stock price drop was not the result of a corrective disclosure, but of other factors present at the same time – although defendants should still be able to offer evidence and expert testimony to define the proper contours of the class period based on market events and the timing of corrective disclosures.  But most of the defense arguments that have been used to oppose class certification – whether they are phrased in terms of materiality, falsity, or loss causation – will continue to be available, and effective, through motions to dismiss.

More significantly, the Amgen decision suggests room for doubt on the larger question of reliance – the most fundamental and problematic issue for plaintiffs in obtaining certification of a securities class action.  The decision all but invites the defense bar to use its creativity to find the right argument to advance in the right case, to engage district and circuit courts that are already struggling with the fraud-on-the-market doctrine, and in turn, to tempt the Supreme Court into reconsidering the wisdom of Basic (which it has shown a clear inclination to do).  While Amgen may have closed the door on a few defense strategies – which were rarely successful, in any case, in defeating class certification – it has simultaneously opened the window for defense counsel to find new ways to illustrate the shortcomings of the Basic presumption, and thus to mount a much more serious challenge to ability of the plaintiffs’ bar to bring securities class actions.

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 need to establish that allegedly false statements were material to the market before they can gain class certification.

As I have written before (see here and here), the Court had an opportunity in Amgen to make class certification a more meaningful stage in securities class actions, providing defendants with a new tool for stopping unmeritorious cases early in the process.  On the surface of the Amgen decision, the Court declined to take that step.  For this reason, many of the early reports indicate that the defense bar is concerned about the impact of Amgen.  I’m not concerned.  At worst, Amgen leaves defendants in most circuits in the same position they were before.  (Look for our upcoming post analyzing the effect that Amgen will have in the minority of circuits, such as the Second Circuit, which have previously ruled that materiality can be considered on class certification.)  The decision leaves open several arguments that will allow defendants to continue to challenge lack of materiality in the early stages of litigation.  And, perhaps most significantly, the decision seems to tee up the Court’s re-consideration of the legitimacy and scope of the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance that it adopted in Basic v. Levinson.

I explore Amgen’s impact after discussing its majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions.

In a majority opinion authored by Justice Ginsburg, and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan, the Court concluded that proof of materiality was not necessary to demonstrate, as Rule 23(b)(3) requires, that questions of law or fact common to the class will “predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.”  The Court reasoned that this was because: 1) materiality was judged according to an objective standard that could be proven through evidence common to the class, and 2) a failure to prove materiality would not just defeat an attempt to certify a class, it would also defeat all of individual claims, because it is an essential element to a claim under Section 10(b).

Much can be said, and doubtless will be said, in criticism of the majority’s decision.  Its chief flaw is its avoidance of the central question through circular reasoning.  The materiality of a statement is an essential prerequisite for the application of the fraud-on-the market presumption that the Court developed in Basic v. Levinson, as a device to overcome the need to prove actual, individual reliance on a false or misleading statement – which made securities class actions all but impossible to bring.  In  Basic, the Court used then-emerging economic theory to create a rebuttable presumption of reliance, based on the assumption that a security traded in an efficient market reflects all public material information, and that traders in that market rely on the market price, and thus on any material misrepresentations that are reflected in the price.  The Amgen Court does not dispute that the materiality of a misrepresentation is necessary to create the fraud-on-the-market presumption, nor that the fraud-on-the-market presumption is essential to show under Rule 23 that common questions predominate for the class.

Instead, to avoid the logical conclusion that a showing of materiality was thus necessary to certify the class, the Court reasons backwards:  because plaintiffs must also show the materiality of the alleged misstatements in order to prove the underlying merits of a Section 10(b) claim, a finding that there was no materiality would defeat claims for all plaintiffs, whether brought as a class or individually.  Therefore, the Court concluded, materiality (or the lack of it) was a “common question,” that should not be decided until summary judgment, or theoretically, trial.

As Justice Thomas writes in his dissent (joined by Justice Scalia (in part) and Justice Kennedy), the majority essentially “reverses” the inquiry.  Although class certification is supposed to be decided early in the litigation, and depends upon a showing of materiality to invoke the fraud-on-the-market presumption, the majority effectively says that that portion of the class certification inquiry can be skipped, merely because it is also a question that will be asked at the merits stage.  Writes Thomas:  “A plaintiff who cannot prove materiality does not simply have a claim that is ‘dead on arrival’ at the merits. . .he has a class that never should have arrived at the merits at all because it failed in Rule 23(b)(3) certification from the outset.”

Despite the flaws of the decision, the Court has spoken, and there is limited usefulness to arguing about whether or not its decision is correct.  But lurking under the surface of the opinion are a number of issues that leave ample room for continued litigation over “materiality” issues:

1) The Court affirmed the district court in rejecting Amgen’s effort to offer rebuttal evidence upon class certification that would demonstrate that the misstatement was not material because the truth of the matter had already been disclosed to the market.  If this argument is framed as a “truth on the market” defense, alleging that truthful information had already entered the market by other means, then it is traditionally a question that is entertained at the summary judgment stage.  On the other hand, in its narrow focus on “materiality,” the Court overlooked that this may also be a question properly raised on a motion to dismiss:  if plaintiffs challenge a statement as misleading because it fails to disclose certain information, then the fact that the same information was actually disclosed (in that statement or other statement by the company), negates the existence of a false or misleading statement in the first place.  The Amgen decision will not affect defendants’ ability to make this challenge on a motion to dismiss, as an argument not against materiality, but rather against the sufficiency of plaintiffs’ allegations of falsity.

2) Because Amgen conceded that the market for its stock was “efficient,” the Court avoided more searching examination of what this term means, and how the efficiency of a market – an undisputed prerequisite to the application of the fraud-on-the-market presumption at the class certification stage – can be challenged.  In footnote 6, the Court noted that Amgen had advanced an argument founded on modern economic research tending to show that market efficiency was not a “binary, yes or no question.”  Rather, the efficiency of a market in absorbing information depends upon the type of information – a market might be able to readily process easily digestible information like public merger announcements, while the same market could be slow to respond to potentially important technical or scientific disclosures in an SEC filing. The Court sidestepped the issues raised by this argument, by saying that it did not impact the “materiality” question.

But the argument does raise the question of how efficiency should be defined, and whether the efficiency of a market may depend on the type of statement in question and/or its price impact.  The Court thus left the door open to question on class certification whether a statement was “efficiently” absorbed into, and thus reflected by, the market price.  This argument is a close cousin to materiality, with one important distinction:  I can imagine a circumstance in which a court could find that a public statement was not absorbed into, or reflected by the market price, and that the fraud-on-the-market presumption should not apply – but that, regardless, the statement was still “material,” in that a reasonable investor would find it significant.  In such an instance, the certification of a class would properly be defeated, but the ultimate question of materiality would be left open for an independent determination on the merits should an individual investor bring suit.  Such a circumstance would break the circle upon which the Court based its holding in Amgen.

3) Perhaps the most striking part of the decision was Justice Alito’s one paragraph concurrence, which baldly called for a reconsideration of the fraud-on-the-market presumption created in Basic.  Alito concurred with the majority, but only with the understanding that Amgen had not asked for Basic to be revisited.  Alito thus signaled that he agreed with Thomas’s contention in footnote 4 of the dissent that the Basic decision was “questionable.”  The majority, in turn, did not come to the defense of Basic, but simply noted with apparent relief (in footnote 2) that even Justice Thomas had acknowledged that the Court had not been asked to revisit that issue.  Considered together, these three opinions put out a welcome mat for the right case challenging Basic’s fraud-on-the-market presumption, with four votes already supporting the view that the decision was “questionable,” and the other five failing to come to its defense.  When, and if, Basic is reconsidered, the result could have a much larger impact on the future of class actions than would have been felt by any decision on the “materiality” questions raised in Amgen.

In summary, my first take on the Amgen decision is that far from settling the question of what plaintiffs must prove to gain class certification, it has merely opened the doors wider for continued litigation on the matter.  I predict that these issues are going to continue to be challenged, and that another case on class certification will be before the Court within the next few years.  After considering class-certification issues in Halliburton in 2011, and now in Amgen, the Court seems destined at long last to reach the ultimate question – the legitimacy and scope of the fraud-on-the-market presumption.

That doesn’t mean that Amgen will be forgotten – in addition to leaving behind a number of crumbs to feed continued litigation of “materiality” questions, the majority seemed to signal a shift away from its historic narrow construction of the securities laws based on the Court’s observation in Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores that “litigation under Rule 10b-5 presents a danger of vexatiousness different in degree and in kind from that which accompanies litigation in general.”  421 U.S. 723, 739 (1975).  Here, the Court flatly rejected Amgen’s argument based upon the public policy interest of containing that “vexatiousness.”  Amgen argued that if materiality was not addressed in class certification, it was likely not to be ever addressed at all, because after class certification, plaintiffs are able to bring substantial pressure to bear on defendants to get them to settle before the merits phase – even on frivolous claims.  But the Court contended that Congress had already taken steps, through the Reform Act, to curb the “‘extraction’ of ‘extortionate settlements’” of frivolous claims,” and, in doing so, had consciously decided not to challenge the fraud-on-the-market presumption. And while continuing to recognize the potential for abuse, the Court nonetheless chose to emphasize the possibility that securities class actions also serve an important public policy purpose, by supplementing the criminal prosecutions and civil enforcement actions brought by the DOJ and the SEC.  As the debate over the “materiality” question continues to play out, this passage may prove to be the most enduring takeaway from Amgen – and the one most likely to haunt us in plaintiffs’ briefs in the coming years.

 

This promises to be an eventful  year in securities and corporate governance litigation.  A number of looming developments have the potential to change the landscape for many years to come. This is the first of two posts – or three, if I get carried away – discussing some of these developments.

The Delaware Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana Municipal Police Employees’ Ret. Sys. v. Pyott (the Allergan derivative case)

In Allergan, the Delaware Supreme Court will decide whether the dismissal of a hastily filed shareholder derivative action precludes a subsequently filed action that was based on information obtained under a request to inspect books and records under Section 220 of the Delaware General Corporation Law.  Section 220 allows a stockholder to inspect a corporation’s “books and records” for a “proper purpose.”   On February 5, 2013, the Delaware Supreme Court heard oral argument.

In the Court of Chancery, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster ruled that the plaintiffs in the previously dismissed litigation, filed in California, provided “inadequate representation” to the corporation because, unlike the plaintiffs in the Delaware action, they did not utilize Section 220 to attempt to determine whether their claims were well-founded.  46 A.3d 313, 335-51 (Del. Ch. 2012).  The failure to provide adequate representation deprived the dismissal of preclusive effect.  In South v. Baker (the Hecla Mining derivative case), Vice Chancellor Laster similarly ruled that derivative plaintiffs who filed without the benefit of 220 provided inadequate representation.  2012 WL 4372538, at *20 (Del. Ch. Sept. 25, 2012).

Delaware courts have long urged shareholders to use Section 220 before filing derivative litigation.  A ruling that a derivative action filed without the benefit of 220 constitutes inadequate representation would be tantamount to a requirement that stockholders use Section 220 before filing a derivative complaint in many types of derivative cases.

Many defense counsel believe that a pre-filing 220 requirement would be a positive development, because they believe that in many cases, plaintiffs’ lawyers do not want to go to the time and expense of a 220 demand, and would therefore file fewer derivative cases.

I say be careful what you wish for: 220 demands impose compliance costs, risk interference with the discovery stay in related securities litigation, and can create more virulent derivative cases, because they facilitate pleading with factual support, which the defendants sometimes can’t combat effectively on a motion to dismiss.  In contrast, although they are a nuisance, fast-filed derivative cases are routinely dismissed.  And a dismissal can be achieved without great cost – if the defense firm defends the case strategically and efficiently.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Amgen

Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans, pending before the Supreme Court, could bring significant change to securities litigation.  At issue is whether plaintiffs need to establish that the allegedly false statements were material to the market, before a court can certify a securities lawsuit as a class action.  If the answer is “yes,” class certification will become a more meaningful stage in securities class actions, providing defendants with a new tool for stopping unmeritorious cases relatively early on.

If the answer is “no,” class certification will remain mostly inconsequential, with the arguments centering around whether the class representative is adequate and typical, which in the vast majority of cases has little impact on the case as a whole – even if successful, these efforts often just mean a new class representative.  The discovery and motion practice associated with such efforts costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I’ve found the cost/benefit calculation isn’t worth it in most cases, and have become more conservative about opposing class certification absent compelling circumstances. But the ruling in Amgen could change this analysis, and breathe new life into the class certification process.

Federal courts’ application of the scienter decision in Matrixx

After the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, 131 S. Ct. 1309 (2011), it initially seemed to be an innocuous ruling that would have very little impact.  At issue was whether a drug manufacturer had a duty to disclose statistically insignificant adverse health impacts.  The issue was narrow, and the plaintiffs had the better legal argument.  So I was puzzled about why the parties litigated the issue to the Supreme Court and why the Supreme Court took the case.

Supreme Court decisions can have unintended consequences, and Matrixx may well end up altering courts’ scienter analysis for reasons that the Supreme Court almost certainly didn’t intend.  After deciding that Matrixx had a duty to disclose the adverse events, because they made its statements misleading, the Court found that the plaintiffs had pleaded scienter adequately under Tellabs.  Given that scienter was not the central issue before the Court, the Court’s scienter analysis was not elaborate, and it fairly easily found that the plaintiffs’ allegations sufficed to plead scienter.  The Court applied Tellabs, and in no way indicated that it was fashioning a new type of scienter analysis.

Yet some courts have read the Matrixx Court’s short scienter analysis as a signal that scienter analysis no longer should review scienter allegations individually as well as “holistically.”  For example, in Frank v. Dana Corp., 646 F.3d 954, 961 (6th Cir. 2011), the Sixth Circuit said (citations omitted):

In the past, we have conducted our scienter analysis in section 10(b) cases by sorting through each allegation individually before concluding with a collective approach. However, we decline to follow that approach in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in [Matrixx]. There, the Court provided for us a post-Tellabs example of how to consider scienter pleadings “holistically” in section 10(b) cases. Writing for the Court, Justice Sotomayor expertly addressed the allegations collectively, did so quickly, and, importantly, did not parse out the allegations for individual analysis. This is the only appropriate approach following Tellabs’s mandate to review scienter pleadings based on the collective view of the facts, not the facts individually. Our former method of reviewing each allegation individually before reviewing them holistically risks losing the forest for the trees. Furthermore, after Tellabs, conducting an individual review of myriad allegations is an unnecessary inefficiency. Consequently, we will address the Plaintiffs’ claims holistically.

The Tenth Circuit took a similar view in In re Level 3 Communications, Inc. Securities Litigation, 667 F.3d 1331, 1344 (10th Cir. 2012).

On the other hand, more recently, the Ninth Circuit in In re VeriFone Holdings, Inc. Securities Litigation, 2012 WL 6634351, *5-*6, ___ F.3d ___ (9th Cir. Dec. 21, 2012), affirmed the permissibility of a two-step analysis – first, a review of the individual scienter allegations and then a holistic review – and correctly ruled that the Supreme Court in Matrixx did not prescribe a particular analysis that a court must undertake, nor did it purport to alter the scienter analysis articulated in Tellabs:

Matrixx on its face does not preclude this approach and we have consistently characterized this two-step or dual inquiry as following from the Court’s directive in Tellabs. In cases where an individual allegation meets the scienter pleading requirement, whether we employ a dual analysis is most likely surplusage because the individual and the holistic analyses yield the same conclusion. Also, as a practical matter, some grouping and discussion of individualized allegations may be appropriate during a holistic analysis.

In its own analysis, the Ninth Circuit skipped analysis of the individual allegations and instead went right to a holistic review, to avoid the “potential pitfalls” of a “focus on the weakness of individual allegations to the exclusion of the whole picture.  The risk, of course, is that a piecemeal analysis will obscure a holistic view.”  The court emphasized, however, that it was not ignoring the individual allegations or the inferences drawn from them.

A solely holistic review risks expanding judicial discretion in applying a rule of law that already allows for significant judicial discretion.  Standards governing individual scienter allegations – for example, that stock sales of a certain percentage generally are not suspicious – impose some objectivity on an otherwise subjective analysis.  And discussion of the allegations individually invites a certain measure of thoughtfulness and skepticism.  A rule that eschews analysis of individual scienter allegations is unfriendly to defendants because it invites judges to engage in a less rigorous analysis that ignores the shortcomings of the individual allegations – and the easy decision in securities cases is usually to deny the motion to dismiss.  Regardless, a cursory analysis of scienter allegations is not fair to defendants, who at least deserve judicial scrutiny of the fraud allegations against them, and is contrary to Congress’ intent that courts play a gatekeeper function in this particularly vexatious type of litigation.

For most readers of this blog, it is now old news that securities class action filings were down in 2012, especially in the second half of the year – this was extensively discussed and examined over the last several weeks by Kevin LaCroix in his blog, The D&O Diary, by Cornerstone Research, and by Law360 and newspapers across the country.  These reports followed NERA’s December publication of data that showed a smaller decrease in filings.

I’ve received many questions about what it means. I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

But there is one thing I am certain of:  it does not mean that plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to stop focusing on securities class action litigation. I say that for one main reason:  there is a group of national, highly specialized plaintiffs’ lawyers whose practices are devoted to securities class actions.  Since the passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, these lawyers and their firms have devoted enormous resources to courting institutional investors to serve as lead plaintiffs and developing systems for evaluating cases and deciding which companies to sue.

These lawyers aren’t suddenly going to become intellectual property attorneys, or go into privacy law – and they are going to continue to put the resources they have invested in to good use. So, as long as these attorneys still practice law and Congress does not abolish this type of litigation, securities class actions will continue.  Companies will continue to have stock drops, and plaintiffs’ attorneys will continue to find ways to profit from them.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers would put it in less crass terms, of course. For example, Gerald Silk of Bernstein Litowitz, in a Law360 article by Max Stendahl, put it this way:

“It’s important to read this report for what it is: a snapshot in time of class litigation,” Silk said. “Our firm focuses on recommending to institutional clients highly meritorious securities litigation. As far as we’re concerned, we haven’t seen a trend one way or the other in that regard.”

Though securities class actions will continue, the type of actions filed will undoubtedly vary – just as they have for well over a decade – as plaintiffs’ attorneys encounter new obstacles, and find new opportunities.  In other words, plaintiffs’ attorneys adapt to survive. The best example of this evolution is their response to the Reform Act, which put in place many provisions to protect companies from securities class actions.  Many said that the securities class action was dead.

But the plaintiffs’ bar adjusted and found a way to work within the new system.  For example, they started to file securities class actions in state court, until Congress largely put an end to that through the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act.  They also began to use the ubiquitous “confidential witness,” obtaining internal company information from former employees, as a way to meet the Reform Act’s heightened pleading standards despite the mandatory stay of discovery during the motion-to-dismiss process.  And they developed new techniques to land the biggest fish as their clients, to meet the Reform Act’s standard to serve as the lead plaintiffs’ counsel.

In addition to adjusting to changes in the standards governing these actions, plaintiffs’ attorneys have also shown agility in responding to economic developments and public disclosure of potentially fraudulent practices.  As a result, a number of litigation trends have come and gone:

  • the IPO laddering cases, which involved more than 300 issuers and their underwriters;
  • the Sarbanes-Oxley era “corporate scandal” cases, which involved massive litigation against Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, HealthSouth, and others;
  • the mutual fund market timing cases;
  • the options backdating cases, most of which were actually derivative cases, but many plaintiffs’ firms devoted class action resources to them; and
  • the credit crisis cases, on which many plaintiffs’ firms are still spending much of their time.

In fact, you could say that the out-of-the-ordinary type of securities case has become ordinary:  we have been in the midst of one wave or another of them for the past 15 years.

Yet even as they ride out these litigation waves, plaintiffs’ firms have also continued to file plenty of plain vanilla stock drop cases – and they still dependably file them when there are very large declines and/or particularly bad facts.  Some years they file more, some years they file less – and much of this difference seems to be due only to the amount of resources the plaintiffs’ bar is expending on whatever securities litigation wave they are riding at the time.  But at the same time, there is no sign that their more standard fare is on its way out.  Indeed, excluding credit crisis and merger cases, both NERA and Cornerstone’s research shows that securities class action filings actually were down only slightly in 2012, and were up in both 2011 and 2012 compared to 2008-2010.

A final thought.  The prevailing wisdom is that the increase in reflexive shareholder suits following mergers has diverted plaintiffs’ resources from securities class action filings.  I believe there is little or no relationship between the two metrics.  The reason, again, concerns in part the identity of the plaintiffs’ lawyers: the plaintiffs’ lawyers who have driven the high volume of merger and acquisition cases are largely distinct from the specialized lawyers who drive the filing of securities class actions.

I have heard various other theories about why the number of filings was down last year, and some of them are persuasive.  But what I am sure of is that this is not the beginning of the end.

 

The Reform Act’s heightened pleading standards were designed to increase the number of securities class actions dismissed at the pleading stage.  An unintended consequence, however, has been a liberal application of the already liberal standards for amendment under Rule 15.  In Eminence Capital v. Aspeon, Inc., the Ninth Circuit explained the rationale for this approach:

“We need to bear in mind that we are not operating in the world of notice pleadings. In this technical and demanding corner of the law, the drafting of a cognizable complaint can be a matter of trial and error.”

Often, the result is a lengthy and frustrating cycle of amended complaints and motions to dismiss, which allows foredoomed cases to drag on for years at significant cost and hassle to companies and their directors, officers, and insurers – not to mention the burden placed on the court system.  On the other hand, judges are concerned that if they dismiss cases with prejudice too early in the process, their decisions are more likely to be vulnerable on appeal.

A better approach is long overdue, and some judges are clearly searching for one.  I’d like to share a refreshing approach used by a judge in a recent dismissal of a case we are defending, and ask readers to share other constructive solutions to this dilemma.  I’ll catalogue the responses in a future post.  It would be useful to have a checklist of alternatives to the standard approach, so that defendants can make the best possible arguments against leave to amend.

My recent positive experience was in In re L&L Energy, Inc. Securities Litigation.  On December 3, 2012, Judge Robert Lasnik, former Chief Judge of the Western District of Washington, dismissed the plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint (the first litigated complaint). This dismissal is one of only a few dismissal orders in the many cases against China-oriented companies that allege fraud based on differences between financial statements filed in China and the United States.  (The decision will be published in the Federal Supplement.)

Judge Lasnik also rejected the plaintiffs’ boilerplate request for leave to amend.  Instead, he only allowed them the opportunity to file a separate motion for leave to amend, supported by a proposed amended complaint.

This approach has the advantage of forcing plaintiffs to make a Rule 15 showing – that amendment would not be futile – with a proposed amended complaint, before they are allowed to file it and force defendants into another costly and time-consuming motion to dismiss.  If an approach such as this were used more frequently, it would weed out weak cases faster while still allowing the plaintiffs an opportunity to attempt to cure the flaws the dismissal order identifies.  There are cases, however, that call for a first-motion dismissal with prejudice with no such opportunity.

Judge Lasnik used the same procedure in another case I defended, In re Jones Soda Co. Securities Litigation.  There, as in L&L Energy, Judge Lasnik dismissed the complaint on the first motion to dismiss.  The plaintiffs then filed a motion for leave to amend, which the defendants opposed and the Court denied, finding that the proposed amendment would be futile.  The plaintiffs appealed the denial of leave to amend, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.

Again, I ask the readers to share their own positive leave-to-amend experiences, either in the comments below, or in emails or calls to me.  You can find my contact information here.

Happy Holidays.  D&O Discourse will resume in early January 2013.  Upcoming posts include a discussion of the core operations inference by my partner Claire Davis, who joined Lane Powell from Wilson Sonsini earlier this month, and a review of emerging issues in securities litigation.

I am frequently asked about the safety of director service.  Below is the text of a short article I wrote for a forthcoming issue of a business publication.

Although the article is short and non-technical, I decided it was a good opportunity to start a discussion here on director service.  I would enjoy a dialogue with readers on these issues, so please post comments or email or call me.  I may write follow-up blog posts on issues that generate discussion.

D&O insurance is an essential component of the analysis of the safety of director service.  “The ‘Nuts and Bolts’ of D&O Insurance,” by Kevin LaCroix, author of The D&O Diary, is an excellent primer on the subject.

Here is the text of my article:

Disclosure dilemmas and legal problems are a reality of business, and shareholder lawsuits often follow.

So, is it safe to serve on a public company board of directors?  The answer is easy:  yes, it indeed is safe, as long as the director is conscientious and has appropriate corporate protections against personal liability.

Shareholder lawsuits are frequent, but outside director liability is rare.  Shareholder litigation almost never affects the personal finances of outside directors, due to a combination of factors.

  • Shareholder litigation rarely goes to trial.  This is true for many reasons, including potential exceptions under corporate indemnification and Directors’ & Officers’ (“D&O”) liability insurance contracts if a defendant were to lose at trial.
  • Nearly all shareholder cases are settled with D&O insurance proceeds and/or a payment by the company.  Only in exceptional cases have outside directors ever made any significant financial contribution toward the settlement of public company shareholder litigation.
  • Outside directors are not the target defendants in securities class actions.  They are often sued in shareholder derivative actions challenging the directors’ oversight of the company, but plaintiffs face high hurdles to establish liability.  They also are often named as defendants in shareholder challenges to mergers, but such cases almost always settle for modest amounts.

Yet, no director wants to be sued, so prevention of problems is key — the fewer problems, the less risk of litigation, and preventive measures actually establish substantive defenses to liability.  In simple terms, the law expects directors to make sure that their companies have systems in place to prevent and detect problems, and to follow up on indications of a lack of compliance.  Attention is essential.  The Sargent Schultz defense (“I know nothing!”) doesn’t work.

Sarbanes-Oxley’s certification requirements are central to a company’s systems for compliance with the securities laws. Because of Sarbanes-Oxley, more work goes into internal controls, financial reporting, and other public disclosures than ever before, and more issues bubble-up and are addressed at the senior management and board level.  Even though the burdens that these requirements have imposed are onerous, they have made outside directors’ compliance with their oversight duties easier.

Legal compliance on matters other than disclosures is highly company-specific.  In a nutshell, directors need to understand the company’s legal risks, implement the appropriate compliance and reporting systems, and act to address problems as they are identified.  Directors can easily satisfy their oversight duty if they understand their responsibility, ask the right questions and engage the right legal advisors.

If problems and litigation arise, directors have several protections against personal liability.

The most fundamental protection is an “exculpation,” or “raincoat” protection in the company’s corporate charter or articles of incorporation.  In general terms, such a provision provides that directors shall not be liable to the corporation for money damages unless they acted disloyally, intentionally or in bad faith.

Corporate indemnification is a director’s primary financial protection.  Directors should ensure that the company’s indemnification provisions are well-crafted and provide the maximum protection the law allows, and should ask a securities litigator to review them from time to time.

D&O insurance, of course, also provides important protections.  Three points are important to keep in mind:

  1. Engage a broker who is a specialist in D&O insurance coverage and claims.  Such a broker will best know what coverage provisions are possible and at what price, and will know the right structure and amount of insurance.
  2. Focus on protections for outside directors.  Ensure that the insolvency provisions are state-of-the-art, and there is sufficient Side A coverage.
  3. From time to time, ask a securities litigator to review your D&O insurance program.

 

I attended the Supreme Court argument in Amgen yesterday.  Law360 and the 10b-5 Daily, written by my former Wilson Sonsini partner Lyle Roberts (now at Cooley), have posted good summaries of the argument.

Here are links to (1) my October 15 blog post about Amgen and its significance and (2) the Amgen argument transcript.

After a reminder about the legal issue, I offer some thoughts about the argument, including Justice Scalia’s statement, “So maybe we should overrule Basic ….”

The Legal Issue

Reliance is an essential element of a Section 10(b) claim. Absent some way to harmonize individual issues of reliance, however, class treatment of a securities class action is not possible; individual issues would overwhelm common ones, precluding certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3).

In Basic v. Levinson, the Supreme Court provided a solution: a rebuttable presumption of reliance based on the “fraud-on-the-market” theory, which provides that a security traded in an efficient market reflects all public material information. Purchasers (or sellers) rely on the integrity of the market price, and thus on a material misrepresentation.  Decisions following Basic have established three conditions to its application: market efficiency, a public misrepresentation, and a purchase (or sale) between the misrepresentation and the disclosure of the “truth.”

At issue in Amgen is whether the materiality of an alleged misrepresentation is also a condition to the presumption’s application for purposes of Rule 23(b)(3).

The Core of the Dispute

Most of the Amgen argument centered on the following debate:  Materiality is a substantive element of a Section 10(b) claim.  Amgen and the plaintiffs agree that materiality, as a substantive element, is a legal question common to the class.  The United States (and I suspect the plaintiffs too, if they had been asked) agreed that materiality is a condition to the application of the fraud-on-the-market doctrine for purposes of the merits, but not for purposes of Rule 23.

So the dispute boils down to this: if courts were to determine materiality at class certification, they would be deciding a “common question” (i.e. materiality as a substantive element), albeit for purposes of determining whether reliance is a common question; but if courts do not determine materiality at class certification, they are either prematurely or improperly certifying a class, because materiality is necessary to make reliance a common question.  Justice Scalia amplified the latter point as follows:

Materiality is a common issue.  Reliance is only a common issue if you accept the fraud-on-the-market theory.  That’s the problem.  And you are using the one, which is a common issue, to leapfrog into the second, to make the efficiency of the market reasoning something that it isn’t.

There was a lot of fairly technical discussion about the considerations bearing on these issues, including (a) the legal and practical effect of an immateriality ruling at class certification on a class member’s individual claim, (b) the difference between adjudication of materiality at class certification and summary judgment, and (c) the fact that market efficiency and a public statement – both undisputed conditions to the presumption’s application – also are common to all class members.

I’m not a Supreme Court observer and thus will leave the oral argument tea-leaf reading to others.    But it seems to me that, in resolving the technical legal question, the Court will be influenced by precedent proscribing the limits of securities class actions because of the “danger of vexatiousness” they present and the extraordinary pressure a certified class places on defendants to settle.  Justice Scalia emphasized the settlement-pressure point.  In response to a question from Justice Breyer, Seth Waxman of Wilmer Hale, on Amgen’s behalf, synthesized the technical legal point and policy point nicely:

the point of Rule 23 is to say, you get to use this very useful and powerful device if you have the key to the gate, and the key to the gate is showing that the answer to the question, will reliance be proven commonly – not lost commonly, but proven commonly – is in fact yes.

Continue Reading Supreme Court Argument in Amgen

On October 24, Kevin LaCroix’s D&O Diary discussed a report called “The Trial Lawyers’ New Merger Tax,” published by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.  The report proposes several legislative approaches that would funnel all shareholder lawsuits challenging mergers to the seller corporation’s state of incorporation.  Kevin has been a leading commentator in the discussion of the M&A-case problem.  I started to write a reply to his October 24 post but my reply became too involved for a simple comment.  So, I decided to turn it into a post here.

I doubt I need to convince many people, including a great many plaintiffs’ lawyers, that the explosion of M&A cases is a problem.  The problem, of course, is not that shareholders bring lawsuits challenging mergers.  Challenges to transactions based on problematic processes, such as the one at issue in Smith v. Van Gorkom, have improved corporate decision-making.  Rather, the problem is that virtually every acquisition of a public company draws a lawsuit, even though very few transactions are actually problematic, and most cases are filed very quickly, before plaintiffs’ lawyers could possibly have enough information to decide whether the case might have merit.

The result is spurious and wasteful litigation.  But very few cases present significant risk, so the vast majority of cases present a simple nuisance that can be resolved through painless additions to the proxy statement and a relatively small payment to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.  Although companies that are sued bemoan the macro M&A-case problem, each individual company understandably focuses on its own case, and the vast majority conclude that it’s best to settle it rather than defend it to the bitter end.  Collectively, however, the M&A-case problem is significant and needs to be addressed.

Everyone suffers from the M&A-case problem.  Public companies being acquired now expect to be sued, regardless how favorable the transaction and how pristine the process, and are paying higher D&O insurance premiums.  D&O insurers collectively have suffered the full brunt of the problem through payment of defense costs and settlements.  Plaintiffs’ securities lawyers who don’t bring M&A cases, or who bring them more thoughtfully than others, suffer from guilt by association.  Defense lawyers’ law practices have benefited from the increase in M&A cases, but I for one – and I’d bet that the vast majority of my peers would agree with me – would prefer to defend more legitimate M&A cases or other types of matters than the type of M&A cases I’m addressing.

I believe there are two sets of related root causes of the M&A-case problem:

  1. There are too many plaintiffs’ lawyers who bring M&A cases, and too many lawyers file cases over the same transaction with too little coordination among the cases.
  2. Too few cases are weeded out on a motion to dismiss, before the time to settle arrives.  This is due to a number of factors and dynamics, including pleading standards, expedited discovery, and the timing of the transaction.

These sets of causes are intertwined.  Companies are willing to settle because they want certainty that the deal will close on time.  They need to settle to ensure certainty, even if the case lacks merit, because too few cases are dismissed.  They are able to settle because they usually can do so quickly and cheaply.  This is so because few of the plaintiffs’ M&A firms are set up to vigorously litigate even a small percentage of the cases they file; instead, these law firms take a low-intensity, high-volume approach.  Such firms can survive in the M&A-case “market” because of the two root causes: (1) there is too little coordination of the cases – which means that firms often obtain some recovery just by filing a case – and (2) too few cases are weeded out at the dismissal stage – which means that companies must settle to obtain certainty that the deal will close on time.

All of the foregoing adds up to make the M&A litigation business an attractive one for certain plaintiffs’ lawyers.  That attraction increases the number of plaintiffs’ lawyers trolling for cases, which in turn leads to more filings.

Continue Reading M&A Litigation: A Potential Partial Solution to a Big Problem