In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Cyan decision, corporate defendants faced the risk of wasteful and duplicative federal and state court securities litigation. In order to address this concern, corporate reformers suggested that companies should adopt provisions in their corporate charters designating an exclusive federal forum for securities litigation. The Delaware Supreme Court upheld the facial validity under Delaware law of federal forum provisions in the Sciabacucchi decision, but the question remained whether the courts in other jurisdictions would enforce the provisions. A number of courts in California and New York did subsequently uphold the provisions, but these were all trial court rulings.
Now, in an important legal development, a California intermediate appellate court has upheld the enforcement of the provisions, the first appellate decision on the issue outside Delaware. The California appellate court’s ruling in the Restoration Robotics case could represent a significant milestone in the development of post-Cyan litigation. A copy of the California appellate court’s April 28, 2022 decision can be found here. An April 29, 2022 memo from the Latham & Watkins law firm about the appellate court’s decision can be found here.
Continue Reading California Appellate Court Upholds and Enforces Federal Forum Provision
As readers will recall, in August, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) issued a 
In an important development affirming the use of federal forum provisions (FFP) to avoid duplicative parallel state court securities lawsuits, a New York state court judge has granted the securities suit defendants’ motion to dismiss based on the FFP in the corporate defendant’s charter. The ruling appears to be the first in New York – indeed, the first outside of California – to enforce an FFP. The New York court’s enforcement of the FFP is a significant step in companies’ efforts to try to avoid the duplicative litigation problems caused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2018 decision in Cyan. A copy of the August 31, 2021 opinion of the New York state court in the Casa Systems case can be found 
The case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court was to consider the applicability of the PSLRA’s discovery stay in state court ’33 Act actions has been suspended by the Court at the parties’ request. The parties apparently have reached a tentative settlement of the underlying matter and jointly requested that the Court hold the matter in abeyance, pending the parties’ efforts to complete settlement documentation.
In numerous prior posts, I have noted the problems and inefficiencies that the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2018 Cyan decision have wrought, such as, for example, the possibility of multiplied parallel litigation (discussed 
In March 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in the Cyan case that state courts retain jurisdiction for securities class action litigation under the ’33 Act, it set up the state courts and state court securities class action litigants for a host of practical problems. The first is that Cyan allowed the possibility of competing sets of plaintiffs’ lawyers to sue the same defendants in parallel state and federal lawsuits, in what can only be called inefficient and wasteful duplicative litigation. The second is that Cyan left unanswered many questions about the procedures applicable in the state court securities litigation, including questions having to do with the applicability of the procedural safeguards under the PSLRA. Among the many procedural questions that state courts now have to wrestle with is whether the PSLRA’s stay of discovery pending a ruling on the defendants’ motion to dismiss applies to state court proceedings.
In the following guest post, Francis Kean provides us with ten reasons to be cheerful notwithstanding the current D&O insurance market. Francis is a Partner, Financial Lines, at McGill and Partners. A version of this article previously was published Insurance Day. I would like to thank Francis for allowing me to publish his article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Francis’s article.
The directors’ and officers’ liability environment is always changing, but 2020 was a particularly eventful year, with important consequences for the D&O insurance marketplace. The past year’s many developments also have significant implications for what may lie ahead in 2021 – and possibly for years to come. I have set out below the Top Ten D&O Stories of 2020, with a focus on the future implications. Please note that on Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 11:00 AM EST, my colleague Marissa Streckfus and I will be conducting a free, hour-long webinar in which we will discuss The Top Ten D&O Stories of 2020. Registration for the webinar can be found 
A third California state court has ruled that a provision specifying that federal courts are the exclusive forum for the resolution of ‘33 act liability actions is valid and enforceable. This latest decision — in a state court securities class action lawsuit pending against Dropbox — suggests that a broad consensus is emerging in California court to enforce federal forum provisions. But while the Dropbox decision is largely consistent with the prior California state court decisions enforcing FFP, there are certain features of the Dropbox decision that make it noteworthy and interesting in its own right. A copy of the December 4, 2020 decision in the Dropbox case can be found 
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