On May 7, 2009, a jury in the Northern District of Illinois entered a mixed verdict finding in plaintiffs’ favor on several counts in the Household International securities fraud securities class action lawsuit, a long-running case with overtones of the current subprime meltdown. Background regarding the case can be found here.
The verdict
As the subprime meltdown has become a more generalized economic crisis, the adverse consequences have moved far beyond the residential real estate sector where the trouble first began. Until recently, however, the worst effects were concentrated in the financial sector. But as Chrysler’s recent bankruptcy filing shows, the turmoil is no longer limited to the
Securities class action lawsuits filings are on pace to make 2009 the most active for securities class action filings in years, according to Advisen’s May 1, 2009 Securities Litigation Quarterly (here). According to the report, there were 67 securities class action lawsuits in the first quarter of 2009, up from 56 a year
Several of the recipients of TARP funding have also been the targets of securities class action lawsuits and other litigation. In an April 29, 2009 post on the DealBook blog (here), Dan Slater, formerly of the WSJ.com Law Blog, raises the concern that TARP money could be used “to line the pockets of
Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch went through, so we will (fortunately) never know what would have happened if the deal had collapsed. But as detailed in the April 23, 2009 letter (here) from New York AG Andrew Cuomo to Sen. Chris Dodd, Rep. Barney Frank and others, if it had been
One of the recurring issues in securities litigation is the way the erstwhile class counsel and their clients, the prospective class representatives, come together. In what one federal judge described as a "blatant, shocking conflict of interest," it appears, from testimony at a recent lead plaintiff selection hearing, that the leading plaintiffs’ firms are providing
In prior posts (most recently here), I discussed the fact that while litigation against the financial sector has predominated recent securities lawsuit filings, plaintiffs’ attorneys also have targeted other sectors, including in particularly the life sciences sector. An April 2009 memorandum by David Kotler of the Dechert law firm entitled "Dechert Survey of Securities
Antitrust regulation and securities enforcement each involve entirely separate areas of the law. However, an increasingly frequent follow-on effect of a regulatory investigation for allegedly anticompetitive conduct is an ensuing class action lawsuit under the securities laws. A lawsuit recently filed in the Southern District of New York, which also has some unique characteristics all
On April 9, 2009, the subprime securities lawsuit pending against Radian Group joined the growing list of subprime-related cases in which the dismissal motions have been granted. Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Mary McLaughlin entered the order dismissing the case, without leave to amend. A copy of the opinion can be found here.
The possibility that a conflict of interest could arise when an attorney or law firm simultaneously representes a corporation and one or more of its officers or directors is a a frequently recurring issue. The issue was raised recently, for example, in the civil complaint that former Stanford Financial Group CFO Laura Pendergest-Holt filed against the