It is a well-established fact that securities class action lawsuits rarely go to trial. In most cases, the lawsuits are either dismissed or settled. However, there has been an interesting recent uptick in the number of securities suits going all the way to a jury verdict. In the latest example of this development, on May 14, 2026, a federal court jury entered a defense verdict following trial in the long-running ExxonMobil securities class action lawsuit. As discussed below, this verdict is the latest of several post-trial verdicts entered in securities suits this year. A May 14, 2026, Law360 article about the verdict can be found here.

As discussed here, a plaintiff shareholder first filed this action in the Northern District of Texas against ExxonMobil and certain of its directors and officers in November 2016. The lawsuit as originally filed raised a number of allegations, including in particular that the defendants misrepresented the profitability and valuation of the company’s operations at Kearl Lake in Canada and its Rocky Mountain dry gas assets. In August 2018, the defendants’ motion to dismiss was largely denied, as discussed in detail here.

Trial in the matter commenced in late April 2026. The trial proceeded for three weeks. The jury delivered its verdict on May 14, 2026. The jury found for the defendants and against the plaintiffs on all counts. A May 15, 2026, statement from Exxon’s defense firm about the verdict can be found here.

Discussion

Though securities class action lawsuits rarely proceed all the way through trial, there recently has been a rash of jury verdicts in securities suits. By my count, this case is the third securities suit to proceed through trial to verdict so far in calendar year 2026. As discussed here, the Armistice Capital case went to verdict in April 2026, and the Elon Musk/Twitter Acquisition case went to verdict in March 2026, as discussed here.

The three jury verdicts so far this year are noteworthy if for no other reason than that such verdicts are so rare. There have been over 7,000 securities class action lawsuits filed in the U.S. since the beginning of 1996, and by my count only about 30 cases have gone to trial (inclusive of the three cases that went to trial this year). That is, only about one-half of one percent of all securities suits go to trial. All the rest are dismissed or settled (or are currently in process).

It is also noteworthy that this case resulted in a defense verdict, as did the Armistice Capital case in April. I have long thought that if more securities suits went to trial, fewer cases would be filed. The two recent defense verdicts might help advance this prospect. However, it should be noted that the Elon Musk/Twitter Acquisition case resulted in a partial verdict in plaintiffs’ favor. So the potential messages from recent verdicts is at best mixed.

There is another noteworthy thing about the recent ExxonMobil verdict and that is that this case as originally pitched was built in significant part on climate change-related allegations, as detailed in my post about the plaintiff’s initial complaint (here). In essence, the asset valuation issues the plaintiff raised had to do with questions surrounding the valuation of hydrocarbon assets whose economic value might not be realized due to changing regulation and cultural views arising in response to climate change.

From the publicity surrounding the recent trial of this case, it appears that as this case progressed the plaintiff lawyers de-emphasized the climate change-related allegations. It does not appear that the climate change-related allegations were a particular focus at the trial, which is interesting since at the outset the climate change related allegations were a major point of focus.

In any event, for observers of directors’ and officers’ liability issues, the fact that three cases have gone to trial this year is interesting and potentially significant. To be sure, the trial in this ten-year-old case was a long time coming, and it arguably is only coincidental that it happened to go to trial now. But nevertheless there is something very interesting about the fact that so many securities suit have recently gone to trial. The question is whether the recent rash of trials represents an indication that we might need to anticipate that more cases may go to trial than has been the case in the past.