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Full-Text Articles in Law
Punitive Damages And Class Actions, Francis Mcgovern
Punitive Damages And Class Actions, Francis Mcgovern
Faculty Scholarship
The union of punitive damages and class actions can be aptly described with Samuel Johnson’s famous quotation regarding marriage: “The triumph of hope over experience.” By most conventional wisdom, there is little future for plaintiffs or defendants who desire to resolve punitive damages claims globally using the procedural vehicle of a class action. From a conceptual perspective, however, there are circumstances under which the union could function. This Article explores those possibilities, not in the spirit of normative support, but in the spirit of exploring theories that may have some prospective vitality. Notwithstanding the chilly reception that punitive damages class …
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 …
Judicial Ability And Securities Class Actions, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
Judicial Ability And Securities Class Actions, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner
Faculty Scholarship
We exploit a new data set of judicial rulings on motions in order to investigate the relationship between judicial ability and judicial outcomes. The data set consists of federal district judges’ rulings on motions to dismiss, to approve the lead plaintiff, and to approve attorneys’ fees in securities class actions cases, and also judges’ decisions to remove themselves from cases. We predict that higher-quality judges, as measured by citations, affirmance rates, and similar criteria, are more likely to dismiss cases, reject lead plaintiffs, reject attorneys’ fees, and retain cases rather than hand them over to other judges. Our results are …
Mapping The American Shareholder Litigation Experience: A Survey Of Empirical Studies Of The Enforcement Of The U.S. Securities Law, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas
Mapping The American Shareholder Litigation Experience: A Survey Of Empirical Studies Of The Enforcement Of The U.S. Securities Law, James D. Cox, Randall S. Thomas
Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, we provide an overview of the most significant empirical research that has been conducted in recent years on the public and private enforcement of the federal securities laws. The existing studies of the U.S. enforcement system provide a rich tapestry for assessing the value of enforcement, both private and public, as well as market penalties for fraudulent financial reporting practices. The relevance of the U.S. experience is made broader by the introduction through the PSLRA in late 1995 of new procedures for the conduct of private suits and the numerous efforts to evaluate the effects of those …