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Judgment Day For Fraud-On-The-Market: Reflections On Amgen And The Second Coming Of Halliburton, Donald C. Langevoort
Judgment Day For Fraud-On-The-Market: Reflections On Amgen And The Second Coming Of Halliburton, Donald C. Langevoort
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the "fraud on the market" presumption of reliance, facilitating large scale class actions for this kind of securities fraud. This essay traces the road from its decision last year in Amgen to this year's reaffirmation in Halliburton II, and considers some of the issues that will emerge as lower courts struggle with Halliburton II's secondary holding--that the issue of "price impact" is crucial to class certification, even if the burden of proof is on the defendants.
Lies Without Liars? Janus Capital And Conservative Securities Jurisprudence, Donald C. Langevoort
Lies Without Liars? Janus Capital And Conservative Securities Jurisprudence, Donald C. Langevoort
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The Supreme Court’s recent Janus Capital case offers a reading of the word “make” in Rule 10b-5 that speaks to ultimate legal authority over the communication in question. This creates the real possibility that we can have lies without liars, an entirely perplexing result in terms of any purposive meaning of the rule. In so holding, Justice Thomas joined a seemingly short list of judges who suggest that legal formalism is a particularly good weapon with which to fight securities fraud. This paper exploresJanus through the lens of conservative textualism, which takes us through a much longer intellectual history …
Meaning, Purpose, And Cause In The Law Of Deception, Gregory Klass
Meaning, Purpose, And Cause In The Law Of Deception, Gregory Klass
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Laws designed to affect the flow of information take many forms: rules against misrepresentation, disclosure requirements, secrecy requirements, rules governing the formatting or packaging of information, and interpretive rules designed to give people new reasons to share information. Together these and similar rules constitute the law of deception: laws that aim to prevent or cure deception. One encounters similar problems of design, function and justification throughout the law of deception. Yet very little has been written about the category as a whole. This article begins to sketch a general theory. It identifies three regulatory approaches. Interpretive laws, such as common …
Implied Certification Under The False Claims Act, Gregory Klass, Michael Holt
Implied Certification Under The False Claims Act, Gregory Klass, Michael Holt
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The False Claims Act prohibits fraud by government contractors, including a contractor's false certification of compliance with the contract, statutes or regulations. In the early 1990s, some courts began holding that the act of requesting payment from the government implicitly represents such compliance for the purposes the FCA. Circuits are today split on the implied certification doctrine. This Article provides a theory of implied certification, suggests how the circuit split should be resolved and describes how contracting agencies should write contracts in light of the existing rule. There are good reasons for the implied certification rule: it is an information-forcing …
Teaching Enron, Milton C. Regan
Teaching Enron, Milton C. Regan
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
What follows is a discussion of several transactions that the Examiner analyzed for the Enron bankruptcy court. These represent only a portion of the many transactions that the Examiner analyzed, but constitute a large number of the transactions with respect to which he focused on the conduct of attorneys. In most of these cases, the Examiner found that Enron's lawyers potentially could be liable to the company under various causes of action. In some instances, the Examiner did not find potential liability. These transactions are included in my discussion, however, because they can be used to explore certain ethical issues …
Promissory Fraud Without Breach, Gregory Klass, Ian Ayres
Promissory Fraud Without Breach, Gregory Klass, Ian Ayres
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This Article, in keeping with the theme of this Symposium, explores the possibility of promissory fraud liability where there is no breach of contract. It is well known that mere breach of contract is not sufficient to make out a claim of promissory fraud. This rule makes eminent sense, for a promisor who initially intended to perform may have later changed her mind. Here we pose the converse question: is it possible to have promissory fraud liability without a breach?
Ethics, Law Firms, And Legal Education, Milton C. Regan
Ethics, Law Firms, And Legal Education, Milton C. Regan
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
A rash of recent corporate scandals has once again put professional ethics in the spotlight. It's hard to pick up the Wall Street Journal each day and not read that authorities have launched a new investigation or that additional indictments are imminent. Stories of financial fraud and outright looting have galvanized the public and shaken the economy. What ethical lessons can we draw from these events? Two explanations seem especially prominent. The first is a story of individuals without an adequate moral compass. Some people's greed and ambition were unchecked by any internal ethical constraints. For such deviants, no amount …