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Liability And Admission Of Wrongdoing In Public Enforcement Of Law, Samuel W. Buell
Liability And Admission Of Wrongdoing In Public Enforcement Of Law, Samuel W. Buell
Faculty Scholarship
Some judges and scholars have questioned the social value of the standard form in which the Securities and Exchange Commission settles its corporate enforcement actions, including the agency’s use of essentially unreviewed consent decrees that include no admission of liability or wrongdoing. This essay for a symposium on SEC enforcement provides an analysis of the deterrent effects of the three main components of settlements in public enforcement of law: liability, admission, and remedy. The conclusions are the following. All three components have beneficial deterrent effects. Cost considerations nonetheless justify some settlements that dispense with liability or admission, or even both. …
Lying And Getting Caught: An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Securities Class Action Settlements On Targeted Firms, James D. Cox, Lynn Bai, Randall S. Thomas
Lying And Getting Caught: An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Securities Class Action Settlements On Targeted Firms, James D. Cox, Lynn Bai, Randall S. Thomas
Faculty Scholarship
The ongoing Great Recession has triggered numerous proposals to improve the regulation of financial markets and, most importantly, the regulation of organizations such as credit rating agencies, underwriters, hedge funds, and banks, whose behavior is believed to have caused the credit crisis that spawned the economic collapse. Not surprisingly, some of the reform efforts seek to strengthen the use of private litigation. Private suits have long been championed as a necessary mechanism not only to compensate investors for harms they suffer from financial frauds but also to enhance deterrence of wrongdoing. However, in recent years there has been a chorus …
There Are Plaintiffs And … There Are Plaintiffs: An Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Action Settlements, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas, Lynn Bai
There Are Plaintiffs And … There Are Plaintiffs: An Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Action Settlements, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas, Lynn Bai
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, we examine the impact of the PSLRA and more particularly the impact the type of lead plaintiff on the size of settlements in securities fraud class actions. We thus provide insight into whether the type of plaintiff that heads the class action impacts the overall outcome of the case. Furthermore, we explore possible indicia that may explain why some suits settle for extremely small sums - small relative to the "provable losses" suffered by the class, small relative to the asset size of the defendant-company, and small relative to other settlements in our sample. This evidence bears …