Like everyone else, I have been following the Ebola outbreak news with a mixture of horror and fascination. I never in a million years imagined that I would have occasion to write about the Ebola outbreak on this blog. Perhaps due to a lack of imagination on my part, I never foresaw that there might
Tesco Accounting Scandal Draws Securities Class Action Lawsuit
When Tesco PLC announced on September 22, 2014 that its previously forecast first-half profit had been overstated by £250 ($408.8 million), the news of the accounting irregularities was “serious,” as Tesco plc’s CEO of less than a month’s standing at the time put it. The company also announced that the overstatement, first flagged when an
A Whole Bunch of Interesting Litigation and Enforcement Statistics and Analyses
A single case may involve a host of interesting issues but sometimes the important lessons can only be discerned when many cases are considered collectively. This past week saw the release of some interesting analyses of aggregate litigation and enforcement statistics, each set of which told some interesting tales to tell and identified some important
Advisen Releases Third Quarter Corporate and Securities Claims Trends Report
Continuing an recent downward trend, corporate and securities litigation filings during the third quarter declined, both compared to the prior quarter and compared to the third quarter last year, according a new report from Advisen, the insurance information firm. In its report, entitled “D&O Claims Trends: Q3 2014” (available here), Advisen reports that corporate
Fifth Circuit Reverses District Court, Holds Multiple Disclosures Establish Loss Causation Even if No Single Disclosure Alone Sufficient
A recurring question arising in class action securities litigation is what constitutes a “corrective disclosure” for purposes of satisfying the requirements for pleading loss causation. In the Amedisys securities class action litigation, the district court had examined the five partial disclosures on which the plaintiff sought to rely to establish loss causation and held
Foreign Investors Who Bought BP Shares Overseas Can Pursue English Law Claims in U.S. Court
The U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank seemed to sound the death knell for so-called “f-cubed” litigation – that is, lawsuits brought in U.S. courts under the U.S. securities laws by foreign investors who bought their shares in a foreign company on a foreign exchange. However, in an interesting
Defendants Unable to Establish Absence of Price Impact, Class Certification Granted
In its long-awaited June 2014 decision in the Halliburton case, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to jettison the fraud on the market theory on which the presumption of reliance is based, but it did provide that defendants could attempt to rebut the presumption of reliance by showing that the alleged misrepresentation that is the basis
Supreme Court Will Not Consider the Securities Act Statute of Repose Issue in the Indy Mac Case After All
As I had noted on this blog (here), one of the important securities law cases on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket for the upcoming term involved the failed IndyMac bank. The Court had granted cert in the case to decide whether the three-year limitations period in Section 13 of the ’33 Act may
SEC Announces Largest Yet Whistleblower Bounty Award of Over $30 Million
In what is by far the largest whistleblower bounty award yet under the Dodd-Frank’s whistleblower provisions, the SEC on September 22, 2014 announced an award of between $30 and $35 million to a whistleblower who provided original information that led to a successful SEC enforcement action. In the SEC’s Order providing for the award (
Second Circuit Affirms Porsche Securities Suit Dismissal; Domestic Transaction Necessary But Not Sufficient to Invoke U.S. Securities Laws
On August 16, 2014, in a long-awaited decision that is sure to provoke comment and that could fuel disputes in future cases, the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the securities suits hedge fund purchasers of certain swap agreements had filed against Porsche and its executives.
The plaintiffs contended that because they had completed the