As I discussed in a recent post (here), the Ninth Circuit recently reversed in part the district court’s dismissal of the Google+ user data-related securities class action lawsuit. One feature of the decision that perhaps did not attract as much attention is the appellate court’s reversal of district court’s dismissal of the plaintiff’s scheme liability claims. In the following guest post, Bruce Vanyo and Jonathan Rotenberg discuss the significance of the scheme liability portion of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion. Bruce and Jonathan are partners in the Securities Litigation practice at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, resident in the New York office. I would like to thank Bruce and Jonathan for allowing me to publish their 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 the authors’ article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Ninth Circuit Invokes Lorenzo to Revive Scheme Liability Claims
In its 2011 decision in the Janus Group case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that one who does not “make” a false statement cannot be held liable under section (b) of Rule 10b-5. In an enforcement action brought against him by the SEC, the defendant, Francis Lorenzo, argued that under the Janus case, he could not be held liable under the securities laws for forwarding a misleading email his boss had written because he did not “make” the false statement. The case ultimately made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 27, 2019, the Court found that even if Lorenzo could not be held liable under section (b) of the Rule because he did not “make” the statement, he could still be held liable under the scheme liability provisions in sections (a) and (c) of the Rule for disseminating the document. The Court’s March 27, 2019 opinion in Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission can be found