The PSLRA’s Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements is designed to encourage companies to provide investors with information about future plans and prospects by limiting their potential liability for these statements. Under the first prong of the Safe Harbor, a defendant is not liable with respect to any forward-looking statement if it is identified as forward-looking and is accompanied by “meaningful cautionary statements” that alert investors to the factors that could cause actual results to differ.
In the case of oral forward-looking statements, the PSLRA specifically provides that the meaningful cautionary statements can be incorporated by reference in a readily available written document. The statute is silent, however, about whether this is also true for written forward-looking statements. A surprisingly small number of courts have addressed this issue, but the trend appears to be in favor of finding that a company’s incorporation by reference is sufficient.
In Yellen v. Hake, 2006 WL 1881205 (S.D. Iowa July 7, 2006), the court addressed a securities class action brought against Maytag Corp. The court found that “[w]hile the Safe Harbor provision does not explicitly provide for incorporation by reference for written forward-looking statements” it is implicit in Congress’ direction that courts consider “all information and documents relevant to a determination of whether a defendant has given adequate warnings.” Accordingly, the court agreed to consider warnings contained in Maytag’s 2004 Annual Report that were incorporated by reference in the press release and investor presentations that allegedly contained false or misleading forward-looking statements.
The 10b-5 Daily 