The New York Law Journal has a column (via law.com – free regist. req’d) on the hazards of cooperating with government investigations. Among the possible consequences is that securities plaintiffs may be able to lift the PSLRA’s mandatory discovery stay. The 10b-5 Daily has covered the district court spit on this issue extensively, most recently in a post from last September entitled “The ‘Government Investigation’ Exception.”
Quote of note: “Recently, some courts have been moved by the argument that sustaining the mandatory stay would unduly prejudice or unfairly disadvantage plaintiffs otherwise unable to gain access to documents already produced to government agencies conducting investigations that mirror plaintiffs’ claims. Reasoning that securities plaintiffs would be unfairly kept out of the judicial loop without access to the documents already held by those agencies while parallel investigations and prosecutions proceeded, these courts have determined that plaintiffs are entitled to have these same documents.”
The 10b-5 Daily 