The respondent’s brief in Merrill Lynch v. Dabit, the first of two SLUSA cases that will be heard by the Supreme Court this term (see post below), can be found here. The following entities have filed amicus briefs in support of Dabit’s position: the National Association of Shareholders and Consumer Attorneys and AARP, IJG Investments Limited Partnership and Iriys Guy, Phillip Goldstein and Bulldog Investors, and New York. Oral argument is scheduled for next Wednesday.
SLUSA Again
When you’re hot, you’re hot. The Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 (SLUSA) will be the subject of a second U.S. Supreme Court argument this year following the granting of certiorari in the Kircher v. Putnam Funds Trust case. The question presented is whether a party may appeal a district court’s decision to remand a case to state court pursuant to SLUSA. There is currently a circuit split between the Second and Ninth Circuits (not appealable) and the Seventh Circuit (appealable) on this issue. Scotusblog reports that the case will be heard in April.
Filed under Appellate Monitor
Rescission
In-House Counsel has an overview of the recent trends in court decisions on director and officer liability insurance coverage. In particular, the article addresses the increasing number of cases in which alleged misrepresentations in the insurance application (usually involving financial information that a company is forced to later restate) have led insurers to rescind their policies.
Quote of note: “The remedy of rescission is a response to corporate fraud. The very reason corporations seek outside directors is to attempt to pre-empt any such fraud. Proliferation of the rescission remedy as to innocent directors and officers will discourage qualified outside directors from accepting such positions, thereby increasing the very conduct the rescission remedy seeks to discourage.”
Filed under All The News That's Fit To Blog
Cornerstone And Stanford Release Report On Filings In 2005
Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse have released a report on federal securities class action filings in 2005. The findings include:
(1) The overall number of securities class actions filed in 2005 decreased more than 17%, falling from 213 filings to 176 filings. This year’s filing rate is nearly 10% below the post-PSLRA historic average. Moreover, the alleged investor losses associated with the cases decreased significantly.
(2) Filing activity declined in the technology and communications sectors (down 32% from 2004). The consumer non-cyclical sector (e.g., biotechnology, commercial services, cosmetics, food, healthcare products) gave rise to the most securities class action litigation.
(3) There was a substantial increase in the number of securities class actions alleging misrepresentations in financial reporting (from 78% in 2004 to 89% in 2005) and false forward-looking statements (from 67% in 2004 to 82% in 2005).
The authors of the report suggest that the decrease in overall filings may be the result of the large majority of suits related to the boom-and-bust cycle of the late 1990s-early 2000s having already been filed, improvements in corporate governance, and less stock market volatility.
Filed under Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics
Picking Up The Bill
For those who missed it over the Christmas holiday, the Wall Street Journal had a feature article (subscrip. req’d) last Friday on the battle over whether the settlements entered into by several banks as part of the Enron and WorldCom securities litigations are covered by the banks’ errors and omissions insurance policies.
Quote of note: “But Swiss Reinsurance Co. and some other big insurance companies are balking. While many insurers have paid out at least a portion of such claims, the holdouts say banks shouldn’t be allowed to benefit through insurance from the roles they allegedly played in the frauds, or to cover their fines and legal bills. Beyond the money, the dispute raises questions about how heavily companies can rely on broadly written insurance policies to cover unanticipated losses stemming from alleged wrongdoing.”
Filed under All The News That's Fit To Blog
Working For The SEC
The National Law Journal has a feature article (subscrip. req’d) in its most recent edition on the SEC’s use of private counsel to investigate corporate malfeasance. The article includes a discussion of the conflicting “waiver of privilege” rulings that that have arisen out of the McKesson HBOC securities litigation. (The 10b-5 Daily has posted about some of those decisions.)
Quote of note: “In 2001, the SEC began offering favorable treatment to troubled companies that hire independent counsel to do internal corporate investigations and report back to the SEC. But with that has come a host of new legal challenges. Do companies that waive attorney-client privilege and turn over the results of internal investigations to the SEC also waive the privilege for third parties, such as plaintiffs’ lawyers representing shareholders? And have the outside counsel become, in effect, agents of the government so that cooperating employees need to be given Miranda warnings?”
Filed under All The News That's Fit To Blog
Attorneys’ Fees
Professor Michael Perino, author of the leading treatise on the PSLRA, has published an empirical study of attorneys’ fees in securities class actions. The paper is entitled “Markets and Monitors: The Impact of Competition and Experience on Attorneys’ Fees in Securities Class Actions.” Perino finds that the participation of a public pension fund as a lead plaintiff is correlated with lower attorneys’ fees requests and awards. By contrast, there is no statistically significant correlation associated with the participation of a union pension fund, the other type of institutional investor examined by the study. Court auctions of the lead counsel role result in significantly lower attorneys’ fees. In addition, the participation of repeat players (either courts that are more experienced handling securities class actions or institutional objectors) are correlated with lower attorneys’ fees.
Quote of note: “These findings suggest four basic policy responses. First, because the fee arrangements that public pension funds negotiate appear to be the product of at least some competitive bargaining, courts should look to those arrangements as guidelines for awarding fees in cases without institutional investors. Second, to obtain the benefits of judicial experience in fee awards, courts with comparatively little experience in handling securities class actions should look to the fees that more experienced courts award, a process that will be facilitated by making award decisions (which are predominantly unreported) more widely available. Third, policy should continue to encourage institutions, most particularly public pension funds, to serve as lead plaintiffs and to encourage institutions to monitor fee requests and object to those that are excessive. Finally, courts should continue to experiment with auctioning the role of lead counsel in those cases in which the available lead plaintiffs do not appear to have used competition or otherwise to have engaged in arm’s length bargaining to select class counsel.”
Filed under Lead Plaintiff/Lead Counsel
Scheme Liability
The December 19 edition of the New York Law Journal has a special section (regist. req’d) on securities litigation and regulation. The special section includes articles on scheme liability, scienter and summary judgment, the demand requirement in derivative cases, and the use of asset protection devices in SEC enforcement cases.
The lead article on scheme liability under subsections (a) and (c) of Rule 10b-5 is of particular interest. The article discusses the district court split over whether secondary actors who did not prepare or substantially participate in preparing corporate financial misstatements can still be held liable for them as scheme participants. The issue currently is before the First and Ninth Circuits.
Quote of note: “Recently, plaintiffs have aggressively pursued scheme theories of liability against secondary actors under subsection (a) and/or (c) in cases involving major accounting scandals such as Homestore, Lernout & Hauspie, Parmalat, and Enron. In those cases, plaintiffs allege that secondary actor defendants – who did not make the misleading financial statements and disclosures – are liable under subsections (a) and/or (c) for knowingly or recklessly participating in “schemes” with insiders that allowed the companies to misstate their financial condition. A threshold question presented in these cases is whether a secondary actor who participates in a scheme to generate false financial results, but does not itself participate in generating the company’s financial statements, can be held liable under Rule 10b-5.”
Filed under All The News That's Fit To Blog
More On Footnote Four
The Denver Post has an article on the (in)famous Footnote 4 from the Molson Coors lead plaintiff decision.
Filed under Lead Plaintiff/Lead Counsel
Ethically Challenged Is Not Enough
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued an interesting opinion in a research analyst case. The decision – Brown v. Credit Suisse First Boston LLC, 2005 WL 3359728 (1st Cir. Dec. 12, 2005) – affirms the dismissal of securities fraud claims based on alleged false “buy” recommendations made by CSFB’s analysts with respect to the stock of Agilent Technologies.
The court held that the plaintiffs needed to plead facts “sufficient to indicate that the speaker did not actually hold the opinion expressed.” In examining the existence of this “subjective falsity,” the analysis of the falsity of the statement and the defendants’ fraudulent intent (i.e., scienter) cannot be separated. Accordingly, the PSLRA’s heightened pleading standard for scienter should be applied and the plaintiffs must “plead provable facts strongly suggesting that the speaker did not believe [a] particular opinion to be true when uttered.”
Turning to the complaint, the court found that “while the plaintiffs’ allegations regarding the obvious conflicts of interest and general state of corruption within CSFB’s analyst ranks may be enough to turn the stomach of an ethically sensitive observer, they are insufficient, on their own, to support a fraud pleading with respect to the subjective falsity of the eight ‘buy’ recommendations issued on Agilent stock.” In particular, the court rejected a series of CSFB e-mails that suggested its analysts engaged in “sharp practice,” but fell short of creating a strong inference that any particular “buy” rating did not reflect the personal belief of the analyst in question.
Holding: Dismissal affirmed.
Quote of note: “The plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, show beyond hope of contradiction that the defendants operated without much concern for ethical standards. But the fact that an organization is ethically challenged does not impugn every action that it takes. In a securities fraud case, the plaintiffs still must carry the burden, imposed by the PSLRA, of pleading facts sufficient to show that the particular statements sued upon were false or misleading when made. This is as it should be: the securities laws – and section 10(b) in particular – were designed to provide a damages remedy for losses incurred as a result of false or misleading statements, not to punish defendants for bad behavior in a vacuum.”
Filed under Appellate Monitor
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