The 10b-5 Daily

There was an interesting appellate decision last month in one of the few securities class actions to be tried to a verdict.

In 2005, Thane International won a bench trail in a case concerning the company’s 2002 acquisition of Reliant Interactive Media. A class of Reliant investors brought Securities Act claims seeking recission of the merger. In particular, they alleged that Thane’s pre-merger prospectus contained misrepresentations because it implied that Thane shares would list on the Nasdaq National Market. The company actually commenced trading on the OTCBB.

The Ninth Circuit subsequently found that the district court had erred in holding that the prospectus did not contain material misrepresentations, but remanded so that the district court could address the issue of loss causation. On remand, the district court granted judgment for Thane because the company’s stock price did not decline below the merger price until nineteen days after trading began on the OTCBB. The plaintiffs appealed again.

In Miller v. Thane Int’l, Inc., 2010 WL 3081488 (9th Cir. Aug. 9, 2010), the court found that “stock price evidence may be used in loss causation assessment” even if the market for the stock was inefficient. In the instant case, Thane’s expert demonstrated that that the company’s “stock price could and did impound [i.e., absorb] information about Thane during this nineteen-day period, including the listing on the OTCBB.” Accordingly, the court declined to find that the district court erred in holding that the misrepresentations did not cause any loss.

Holding: Judgment affirmed.

Quote of note: “[T]he materiality inquiry concerns whether a ‘reasonable investor’ would consider a particular misstatement important. It is hypothetical and objective. By contrast, the loss causation inquiry assesses whether a particular misstatement actually resulted in loss. It is historical and context-dependent.”
Thanks to John Letteri for sending in the decision.

He’s back. Judge Easterbrook has authored a new securities litigation decision for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and, as always, it is interesting and contentious.

In Schleicher v. Wendt, 2010 WL 3271964 (7th Cir. Aug. 20, 2010), the court considered to what extent plaintiffs must establish the existence of loss causation before a class can be certified. Defendants argued, based in part on Fifth Circuit precedent (Oscar Private Equity), that the plaintiffs needed to demonstrate that the alleged false statements materially affected the company’s stock price and therefore caused some loss. The court disagreed and held that when and to what extent the alleged false statements affected the stock price are “merits questions” that cannot be resolved as part of the class certification process. Moreover, the Fifth Circuit’s approach would “make certification impossible in many securities suits, because when true and false statements are made together it is often impossible to disentangle the [price] effects with any confidence.”

Holding: Certification of class affirmed.

Quote of note: “Unlike the fifth circuit, we do not understand Basic to license each court of appeals to set up its own criteria for certification of securities class actions or to ‘tighten’ Rule 23’s requirements. Rule 23 allows certification of classes that are fated to lose as well as classes that are sure to win. To the extent it holds that class certification is proper only after the representative plaintiffs establish by a preponderance of the evidence everything necessary to prevail, Oscar Private Equity contradicts the decision, made in 1966, to separate class certification from the decision on the merits.”

A trio of notable appellate decisions have been issued in the last ten days.

(1) In In re Mercury Interactive Corp. Sec. Litig., 2010 WL 3239460 (9th Cir. Aug. 18, 2010), the court addressed the common settlement practice of requiring attorneys’ fees objections to be filed prior to the filing of the actual fees motion and supporting papers. The court found that “the practice borders on a denial of due process because it deprives objecting class members of a full and fair opportunity to contest class counsel’s fee motion.” Accordingly, courts must set a schedule that allows objections to made after the class has an adequate opportunity to review its counsel’s fees motion.

(2) In Malack v. BDO Seidman, 2010 WL 3211088 (3rd Cir. Aug. 16, 2010), the court considered the validity of the fraud-created-the-market theory. Under this theory, a presumption of reliance is established if “the defendants conspired to bring to market securities that were not entitled to be marketed.” The plaintiff must allege both that the existence of the security in the marketplace resulted from the successful perpetration of a fraud on the investment community and that he purchased in reliance on the market. In a long and thorough opinion, the court declined to endorse the theory, finding that common sense and a lack of empirical support “calls for rejecting the proposition that a security’s availability on the market is an indication of its genuineness and is worthy of an investor’s reliance.”

(3) In In re Aetna, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2010 WL 3156560 (3rd Cir. Aug. 11, 2010), the court found that the PSLRA’s safe harbor for forward-looking statements mandated the dismissal of the case. In particular, the statements were accompanied by meaningful cautionary language and were too vague to be material to investors. The 10b-5 Daily’s summary of the lower court decision can be found here.

The scope of the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (“SLUSA”), which precludes certain class actions based upon state law that allege a misrepresentation in connection with the purchase or sale of nationally traded securities, continues to be the subject of litigation. A key issue is to what extent a plaintiff can plead around the preclusive effect of the statute.

In Romano v. Kazacos, 2010 WL 2574143 (2d Cir. June 29, 2010), the Second Circuit considered a pair of state law class actions alleging that Morgan Stanley gave inappropriate retirement advice, which led the plaintiffs to retire early, place their lump sum retirement benefits with Morgan Stanley for investment, and subsequently suffer investment losses. The district court found that SLUSA preempted both actions and dismissed them.

On appeal, the Second Circuit made two key findings.

First, the court held that although a plaintiff is normally the master of his complaint, he “cannot avoid removal by declining to plead ‘necessary federal questions.'” Based on this “artful pleading” rule, in a SLUSA case courts can look beyond the face of the complaint to determine whether the plaintiff has “allege[d] securities fraud in connection with the purchase or sale of securities.”

Second, SLUSA’s “in connection” requirement must be given a broad construction. In the cases at issue, the plaintiffs “in essence, assert that defendants fraudulently induced them to invest in securities with the expectation of achieving future returns that were not realized.” Even though the plaintiffs “did not invest in any covered securities for up to eighteen months” after receiving the relevant retirement advice, the court concluded this time lapse was “not determinative here because . . . ‘this was a string of events that were all intertwined.'” In sum, the court held that “[b]ecause both the misconduct complained of, and the harm incurred, rests on and arises from securities transactions, SLUSA applies.”

Holding: Dismissal based on SLUSA preclusion affirmed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has been busy over the past few weeks.

(1) In the Apollo Group case, the court reinstated the $277.5 million verdict obtained by the company’s investors. The trial court, in a post-verdict decision, had found that the investors failed to prove loss causation. In particular, the court concluded that the two analyst reports relied upon by the plaintiffs as “corrective disclosures” that led to a stock price decline “did not provide any new, fraud-revealing analysis.” Although The 10b-5 Daily suggested that the trial court’s decision could lead to an interesting appeal, the actual opinion is quite anticlimactic. In an unpublished memorandum, the court simply held that “the jury could have reasonably found that the [analyst] reports following various newspaper articles were ‘corrective disclosures’ providing additional or more authoritative fraud-related information that deflated the stock price.” The D&O Diary has extensive coverage, including a guest commentary.

(2) In In re Cutera Sec. Litig., 2010 WL 2595281 (9th Cir. June 30, 2010), the court joined all of the other circuits that have considered the issue (Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh) in finding that the PSLRA’s safe harbor for forward-looking statements “is written in the disjunctive as to each subpart.” As a result, the “defendant’s state of mind is not relevant” in determining whether a forward-looking statement is protected from liability because it is accompanied by “sufficient cautionary language.” Over the years, The 10b-5 Daily has posted frequently on this issue (most recently here).

(3) Many commentators believed that the U.S. Supreme Court would grant cert in the Trainer Wortham case to address the running of the statute of limitations for securities fraud. As it turned out, the Court took the Merck case instead and issued a decision earlier this year. The Court then remanded the Trainer Wortham case for reconsideration. Back in the Ninth Circuit, in Betz v. Trainer Wortham & Co., Inc., 2010 WL 2674442 (9th Cir. July 7, 2010), the court has decided that it would be better for the district court to consider the statute of limitations issue in the first (or, more accurately, second) instance.