The Reform Act was passed by the Contract-with-America Congress to address its perception that securities class actions were reflexive, lawyer-driven litigation that often asserted weak claims based on little more than a stock drop, and relied on post-litigation discovery, rather than pre-litigation investigation, to sort the validity of the claims.  

The Reform Act’s centerpiece is

Over the years, I’ve bemoaned the lack of “litigation” in “securities litigation.”  In this post, I discuss the same problem in “derivative litigation:” why don’t we litigate derivative cases anymore? 

Derivative litigation – in which a stockholder asserts claims that belong to the company – takes multiple forms: tag-along cases to securities class actions