Section 11

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In recent months, IPO activity has reached levels “not seen since the dot-com era,” according to a recent report on the IPO market. On November 3, 2020, the IPO Tracker reported that October was the busiest month for IPOs in 20 years. As discussed below, all this IPO activity may foretell the possibility of increased IPO-related securities litigation ahead.

According to the IPO Tracker, there were 85 IPOs completed in October 2020, which is “the busiest single month for IPOs in 20 years” – surpassing even September 2020’s totals, which had been the busiest month in that period.  The October surge brings the 2020 YTD total through year’s first ten months to 351 completed offerings, which surpasses “every yearly total since 2000.”
Continue Reading Does Increased IPO Activity Foreshadow Increased IPO-Related Securities Litigation Ahead?

After the Delaware Supreme Court’s March 2020 decision in Salzberg v. Sciabacucchi upholding the facial validity of corporate charter provisions designating federal court as the forum for Securities Act liability claims, several questions remained. Among the questions is whether others’ states courts will recognize and enforce federal forum provisions in Delaware corporations’ charters. This issue has been teed up for decision in a Section 11 lawsuit pending in San Mateo County court in California, in a case involving Dropbox. Dropbox has filed a motion urging the California state court to dismiss the action, in reliance on the federal forum provision in its corporate charter.

As discussed Alison Frankel’s July 13 post on her On the Case blog (here), a group of six ex-judges from Delaware has now entered an amicus brief on the issue in the case, urging the California court to recognize Delaware legal authority and enforce the federal forum provision in Dropbox’s charter. The Dropbox case, according to Frankel, is “shaping up as an early test of the application of the [Sciabacucchi decision] that forum selection clauses requiring shareholders to litigate Securities Act claims in federal court are facially valid because they concern the corporation’s internal affairs.”
Continue Reading California Court to Address Enforceability of Delaware Corporation’s Federal Forum Provision

Over the last two years, there have been two important judicial decisions concerning Section 11 litigation. In March 2018, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held in the Cyan case that state courts retain concurrent jurisdiction over lawsuits asserting liability claims under the Securities Act of 1933, a development that has increased the number of state court securities class action lawsuits. In March 2020, in Salzberg v. Sciabacucchi, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the facial validity of corporate charter provisions requiring Section 11 claims to be litigated in federal court. A June 22, 2020 post of the CLS Blue Sky Blog entitled “State Section 11 Litigation in the Post-Cyan Environment (Despite Sciabacucchi)” (here) assesses the Section 11 litigation environment in light of these developments. The paper, written by Stanford Law School Professor Michael Klausner and Jason Hegland, Carin LeVine, and Jessica Shin of Stanford Securities Litigation Analytics, summarizes the authors’ more detailed academic paper (here), as discussed below.
Continue Reading The Post-Cyan Section 11 Litigation Environment

A recent guest post on this site expressed the view that because of the volume of Section 11 litigation being filed in New York state court, New York’s courts “will have a major role in shaping the standards applied in Securities Act litigation going forward.” If that is the case, then the recent ruling by a New York trial court judge granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss in a state court Section 11 action could be significant. New York (New York County) Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager’s May 15, 2020 ruling in the consolidated Sundial Growers Securities Litigation can be found here.
Continue Reading Dismissal Granted in New York State Court Securities Class Action

Priya Cherian Huskins

In a recent post, I took a look at the rise in the number of state court securities class action lawsuits that have been filed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Cyan case. In the following guest post, Priya Cherian Huskins of Woodruff Sawyer & Co. takes a deeper look at the state court securities class action data to assess the extent of the threat of state court securities class action litigation relating to follow-on offerings. A version of this article was previously published in Woodruff-Sawyer’s D&O Notebook.  I would like to thank Priya for her willingness to allow me to publish her 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 Priya’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Is it Really that Bad? Follow-On Offerings and Section 11 Suits in State Court

As readers will recall, in March 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court held in the Cyan case that state courts retain concurrent jurisdiction for liability actions under the Securities Act of 1933. Commentators have correctly identified this decision as primarily of concern to IPO companies. However, one question I regularly get is whether Cyan could mean that companies conducting secondary offerings could also face state court class action securities litigation. I have usually answered this question by saying that while it is theoretically possible, for a number of reasons I thought it was relatively unlikely. Besides, I usually have added, I am not aware of any class action lawsuits in which claimants have filed ’33 Act claims relating to a secondary offering in state court. That is, I was not aware – until now.
Continue Reading Secondary Offerings and State Court Securities Suits

One idea circulating since the U.S. Supreme Court held in Cyan that state court Section 11 actions are not removable to federal court is that companies could avoid state court actions by adopting a federal forum bylaw or charter provision. Indeed, a number of companies recently have adopted these provisions prior to going public. Late last year, a shareholder of several IPO companies filed an action in Delaware Chancery Court seeking a judicial declaration that the companies’ Federal Forum Provisions are invalid. On December 19, 2018, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster issued a memorandum opinion agreeing with the plaintiff and holding that under Delaware law, Federal Forum Provisions are invalid and ineffective. A copy of Laster’s opinion can be found here.
Continue Reading Delaware Court Holds Charter Provision Designating a Federal Forum for Section 11 Claims is Invalid

priya
Priya Cherian Huskins

One of the more interesting current issues in the securities litigation arena is the question of whether or not the concurrent jurisdiction provisions in the ’33 Act continue to afford state court jurisdiction for Section 11 securities class action lawsuits, or whether the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 (SLUSA) superseded these provisions. As I noted in a recent post, a corporate defendant recently filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court to try to get the Court to take up this question. In the following guest post, Priya Cherian Huskins, of Woodruff-Sawyer & Co. examines three different “solutions” that have been proposed to address the ongoing question regarding concurrent state court jurisdiction for Section 11 class action lawsuits. One of the three proposed solutions in the cert petition recently filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, while the other two suggested solutions involve different alternative approaches, including one suggested by Stanford Law Professor Joseph Grundfest.
Continue Reading Guest Post: The State Court Section 11 Problem: Three Solutions

kaganIn a March 24, 2015 opinion in Omnicare, Inc. v. Laborers District Council Construction Industry Pension Fund (here), the U.S. Supreme Court set aside the Sixth Circuit’s ruling that allegations of “objective falsity” were sufficient to make a statement of opinion in securities offering documents actionable. The Supreme Court remanded the case to…

skadden_logo_noLLP_bigAs I discuss in the accompanying post, on March 24, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issues its opinion in the Omnicare case. In the following guest post, the Skadden law firm summarizes the case and its holding. A version of the guest post previously was published as a Skadden client alert. I would like…