While the number of securities fraud lawsuits declined in 2006 (see here and here), the average size of securities fraud lawsuit settlements increased by 37% relative to 2005, even excluding the impact of the Enron settlement, according to a January 2, 2006 study by National Economic Research Associates (NERA). The study, entitled “Recent Trends
Securities Litigation
Stanford Study Details 2006 Securities Fraud Lawsuit Decline
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
On January 2, 2007, the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse , in conjunction with Cornerstone Research, released its year-end study entitled “Securities Class Action Case Filings 2006: A Year in Review” (here), as well as a press release (here) detailing the report’s filings. As The D & O…
10-Year Low in Securities Fraud Lawsuits
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
According to a December 29, 2006 Bloomberg.com article entitled “Stock Fraud Suits at 10-Year Low” (here), the 120 companies sued in securities fraud lawsuits in 2006 represented the lowest annual total since 1996. The article cites data from the Stanford Law School Class Action Clearinghouse. The total of 120 companies sued represents…
A “Modest Proposal” for Securities Litigation Reform
By Kevin LaCroix on
As The D & O Diary has previously noted (most recently here), the attempts by the Paulson Committee to propose ways to improve the competitiveness of the U. S. securities exchanges in the global marketplace may include securities litigation reform. Interest in the Committee’s reform efforts increased substantially as a result of media reports…
Individuals’ Contributions to Securities Lawsuit Settlements
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
As The D & O Diary has previously noted (here), one of the questions following the Enron and WorldCom civil class actions settlements was whether those settlements’ requirement of individual defendants’ contribution to settlement without recourse to insurance or indemnity represented a trend or an aberration. Several recent high-profile securities lawsuit settlements involving…
The Paulson Committee and Securities Regulation Reform
By Kevin LaCroix on
In an earlier post (here), I commented on the initative of the so-called Committee on Capital Markets Regulation to take a look at the impact of regulation on the competitiveness of the U.S. securities markets in the global marketplace. (The Committee has become known as the Paulson Committee because of the public support…
Institutional Plaintiffs’ Impact on Securities Litigation
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
For those of us who must try to understand securities litigation trends, one of the developments worth watching closely has been the impact of institutional plaintiffs (mostly public pension funds) on securities litigation. It has been apparent for some time that cases with institutional lead plaintiffs usually resulted in larger settlements, but the question remained…
Securities Litigation Reform Redux?
By Kevin LaCroix on
When the soi-disant "Committee on Capital Markets" announced (here) on September 12, 2006 that it was forming an independent group of business and academic leaders to study how to improve the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, the press coverage (here) generally presumed that the group would be focused on reforming the…
Criminal Sentencing Perspective on Plaintiffs’-Style Damages Calculations
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
On September 22, 2006, Judge Sim Lake of the United States District Court in Houston re-sentenced former Dynegy tax executive and lawyer Jamie Olis to six years in prison for securities fraud, upon reconsideration after Olis’s initial sentence of 24 years that had been reversed on appeal. (Press reports of the resentencing may be found…
More Notes About the Milberg Weiss Indictment and the Declining Number of Securities Lawsuits
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Plaintiffs' Bar, Securities Litigation
An August 4, 2006 Reuters article provides numeric support for the proposition, advanced in this prior D & O Diary post, that the declining number of securities fraud lawsuits is a consequence of the Milberg Weiss indictment. The article states that the indictment is "having a big impact on [the firm’s] ability to bring…