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Securities fraud

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Collision Between The First Amendment And Securities Fraud, Wendy Gerwick Couture Jan 2014

The Collision Between The First Amendment And Securities Fraud, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

This Article seeks to correct the imbalance that occurs when the First Amendment and securities fraud collide. Under current precedent, securities analysts, credit rating agencies, and financial journalists are subject to differing liability standards depending on whether they are sued for defamation or for securities fraud. Under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, First Amendment protections apply in the defamation context in order to prevent the chilling of valuable speech, yet courts have declined to extend these protections to the securities fraud context. This imbalance threatens to chill valuable speech about public companies. To prevent the dangerous chilling effect of …


Judgment Day For Fraud-On-The-Market?: Reflections On Amgen And The Second Coming Of Halliburton, Donald C. Langevoort Nov 2013

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

In November 2013, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Halliburton litigation to reconsider, and perhaps overrule, its seminal decision in Basic Inc. v. Levinson. Basic legitimated the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance, making securities class actions for claims of false corporate publicity viable, and such cases have become the central mechanisms for private securities fraud litigation. This move came after last Term’s Amgen decision, where four justices signaled their doubts about Basic. This essay looks at the connection between Amgen and the continuing viability of fraud-on-the-market litigation. How Halliburton comes out will likely depend on how the Court …


The Cost Of Securities Fraud, Urska Velikonja Jan 2013

The Cost Of Securities Fraud, Urska Velikonja

Faculty Scholarship

Under the dominant account, securities fraud by public firms harms the firms’ shareholders and, more generally, capital markets. Recent financial legislation—the JOBS Act and the Dodd-Frank Act—as well as the influential 2011 D.C. Circuit decision in Business Roundtable v. SEC reinforce that same worldview. This Article contends that the account is wrong. Misreporting distorts economic decision-making by all firms, both those committing fraud and not. False information, coupled with efforts to hide fraud and avoid detection, impairs risk assessment by providers of human and financial capital, suppliers and customers, and thus misdirects capital and labor to lower-value projects. If fraud …


Opinions Actionable As Securities Fraud, Wendy Gerwick Couture Jan 2013

Opinions Actionable As Securities Fraud, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

This Article proposes a new analytical framework to apply to statements of opinion in securities fraud cases. Although statements of opinion form the basis of some of the most cutting edge securities fraud claims-such as those asserted against securities analysts and credit rating agencies-statements of opinion do not fit squarely within the elements of securities fraud. In particular, three issues arise: (1) When is a statement of opinion false so as to qualify as a misrepresentation? (2) When is a statement of opinion material? (3) And, for that matter, what is the distinction between a statement of fact and a …


Criminal Securities Fraud And The Lower Materiality Standard, Wendy Gerwick Couture Jan 2013

Criminal Securities Fraud And The Lower Materiality Standard, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

No abstract provided.


Understanding Causation In Private Securities Lawsuits: Building On Amgen, James D. Cox Jan 2013

Understanding Causation In Private Securities Lawsuits: Building On Amgen, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

With Amgen, the Supreme Court’s majority once again holds that inquiry into the alleged market impact of a misrepresentation is not required to invoke fraud on the market approach to causation so that the class can be certified. Rather than just leaving matters where they have been since the Supreme Court’s muddled encounter with causation in Basic Inc. v. Levinson, the Supreme Court’s most recent decision appears to relax some earlier-held tenets with respect to markets believed sufficiently efficient for fraud on the market to be invoked. This Article not only identifies the central flaw of Basic that has over …


“Fine Distinctions” In The Contemporary Law Of Insider Trading, Donald C. Langevoort Jan 2013

“Fine Distinctions” In The Contemporary Law Of Insider Trading, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

William Cary’s opinion for the SEC in In re Cady, Roberts & Co. built the foundation on which the modern law of insider trading rests. This paper—a contribution to Columbia Law School’s recent celebration of Cary’s Cady Roberts opinion, explores some of these—particularly the emergence of a doctrine of “reckless” insider trading. Historically, the crucial question is this: how or why did the insider trading prohibition survive the retrenchment that happened to so many other elements of Rule 10b-5? It argues that the Supreme Court embraced the continuing existence of the “abstain or disclose” rule, and tolerated constructive fraud notwithstanding …


The Extraterritorial Application Of U.S. Securities Fraud Prohibitions In An Increasingly Global Transactional World, Joan Macleod Heminway May 2012

The Extraterritorial Application Of U.S. Securities Fraud Prohibitions In An Increasingly Global Transactional World, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

This draft working paper, prepared for a French academic forum entitled “American Law Today: Identity, Mutations, and Debate,” is a brief essay on the current and potential future extraterritorial reach of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Rule 10b-5 adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under Section 10(b). The essay does three principal things. First, it summarizes the key antifraud rules in context. Next, it describes (in brief) the history and current state of the academic and political debate on the extraterritoriality of Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 (including commentary on the …


Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. V. Siracusano: Nasal Spray Decision Throws Corporations Off The Scent Of "Materiality" Definition, Marcie Brecher Jan 2012

Matrixx Initiatives, Inc. V. Siracusano: Nasal Spray Decision Throws Corporations Off The Scent Of "Materiality" Definition, Marcie Brecher

Proxy

No abstract provided.


The Falsity-Scienter Inference, Wendy Gerwick Couture Jan 2012

The Falsity-Scienter Inference, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

No abstract provided.


Chevron, Greenwashing, And The Myth Of 'Green Oil Companies', Miriam A. Cherry, Judd F. Sneirson Jan 2012

Chevron, Greenwashing, And The Myth Of 'Green Oil Companies', Miriam A. Cherry, Judd F. Sneirson

All Faculty Scholarship

As green business practices grow in popularity, so does the temptation to “greenwash” one’s business to appear more environmentally and socially responsible than it actually is. We examined this phenomenon in an earlier paper, using BP and the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe as a case study and developing a framework for policing dubious claims of corporate social responsibility. This Article revisits these issues focusing on Chevron, an oil company that claims in its advertisements to care deeply about the environment and the communities in which it operates, even as it faces an $18 billion judgment for polluting the Ecuadorean Amazon and …


What Were They Thinking? Insider Trading And The Scienter Requirement, Donald C. Langevoort Jan 2012

What Were They Thinking? Insider Trading And The Scienter Requirement, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On its face, the connection between insider trading regulation and the state of mind of the trader or tipper seems intuitive. Insider trading is a form of market abuse: taking advantage of a secret to which one is not entitled, generally in breach of some kind of fiduciary-like duty. This chapter examines both the legal doctrine and the psychology associated with this pursuit. There is much conceptual confusion in how we define unlawful insider trading—the quixotic effort to build a coherent theory of insider trading by reference to the law of fraud, rather than a more expansive market abuse standard—which …


The Plight Of The Individual Investor In Securities Class Actions, David H. Webber Jan 2012

The Plight Of The Individual Investor In Securities Class Actions, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

Individual investors victimized by securities fraud have no voice in directing class actions brought on their behalf once institutional investors obtain lead plaintiff appointments. The same holds for state-level transactional class actions claiming breaches of fiduciary duty by boards of directors in connection with mergers and acquisitions. In theory, the interests of institutional and individual investors align, nullifying the need for a separate voice for individuals; one rationale for the lead plaintiff modifications of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 was that individuals would benefit from the sophistication of institutional investor lead plaintiffs. But in practice, individual investors’ …


Remedies For Foreign Investors Under U.S. Federal Securities Law, Hannah Buxbaum Jan 2012

Remedies For Foreign Investors Under U.S. Federal Securities Law, Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In its 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, the Supreme Court held that the general anti-fraud provision of U.S. securities law applies only to (a) transactions in securities listed on domestic exchanges and (b) domestic transactions in other securities. That decision forecloses the use of the “foreign-cubed” class action, and in general precludes the vast majority of claims that might otherwise have been brought in U.S. court by foreign investors. This article assesses the post-Morrison landscape, addressing the question of remedies in U.S. courts for investors defrauded in foreign transactions. It begins by reviewing the current case law, …


Intraportfolio Litigation Essay, Amanda M. Rose, Richard Squire Jan 2011

Intraportfolio Litigation Essay, Amanda M. Rose, Richard Squire

Faculty Scholarship

The modern trend is for investors to diversify. Shareholders who own one S&P 500 firm tend to own many of the others as well. This trend casts doubt on the traditional compensation and deterrence rationales for legal rules that hold corporations liable for the acts of their agents. Today, when A Corp sues B Corp (for breach of contract, theft of trade secrets, or any other legal wrong), many of the same shareholders own both the plaintiff and the defendant. For these shareholders, damages just shift money from one pocket to another, minus of course lawyer fees. We offer here …


Intraportfolio Litigation, Amanda Rose, Richard Squire Jan 2011

Intraportfolio Litigation, Amanda Rose, Richard Squire

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The modern trend is for investors to diversify. Shareholders who own one S&P 500 firm tend to own many of the others as well. This trend casts doubt on the traditional compensation and deterrence rationales for legal rules that hold corporations liable for the acts of their agents. Today, when A Corp sues B Corp (for breach of contract, theft of trade secrets, or any other legal wrong), many of the same shareholders own both the plaintiff and the defendant. For these shareholders, damages just shift money from one pocket to another, minus of course lawyer fees. We offer here …


Price Fraud, Wendy Gerwick Couture Jan 2011

Price Fraud, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

No abstract provided.


Securities Class Actions As Public Law, James D. Cox Jan 2011

Securities Class Actions As Public Law, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

The Political Economy of Fraud on the Market provides a wide-ranging criticism of and thoughtful reforms for securities class actions....However, both their critique of contemporary class actions and their model of the reforms they propose leave unexamined a good many matters relevant to both the criticism and reform of securities class actions....Bratton and Wachter earn high marks for being less passionate and much more thoughtful than others in the chorus calling for reform; indeed, their observations are among the most thoughtful to be found in this area. Nonetheless, their analysis is incomplete in many important areas, and in addition to …


Morrison V. National Australia Bank: Defining The Domestic Interest In International Securities Litigation, Hannah Buxbaum Jan 2011

Morrison V. National Australia Bank: Defining The Domestic Interest In International Securities Litigation, Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This articles uses the lens of the Morrison v. National Australia Bank to look at domestic and international securities regulation.


Chasing The Greased Pig Down Wall Street: A Gatekeeper’S Guide To The Psychology, Culture And Ethics Of Financial Risk-Taking, Donald C. Langevoort Jan 2011

Chasing The Greased Pig Down Wall Street: A Gatekeeper’S Guide To The Psychology, Culture And Ethics Of Financial Risk-Taking, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The current financial crisis has once again focused attention on lawyers, corporate directors and auditors as gatekeepers, who are expected to introduce some degree of cognitive independence to the task of risk assessment and risk management in public companies, including financial services firms. This essay examines the psychological and cultural forces that may distort risk perception and risk motivation in hyper-competitive firms, beyond the standard economic incentives associated with agency costs and moral hazards, warning gatekeepers against too easily assuming that all is well when insiders display high levels of intensity, focus and devotion to hard-to-achieve goals. In fact, these …


Corporate Governance In The Courtroom: An Empirical Analysis, Jessica M. Erickson Apr 2010

Corporate Governance In The Courtroom: An Empirical Analysis, Jessica M. Erickson

Law Faculty Publications

Conventional wisdom is that shareholder derivative suits are dead. Yet this death knell is decidedly premature. The current conception of shareholder derivative suits is based on an empirical record limited to suits filed in Delaware or on behalf of Delaware corporations, leaving suits outside this sphere in the shadows of corporate law scholarship. This Article aims to fill this gap by presenting the first empirical examination of shareholder derivative suits in the federal courts. Using an original, hand-collected data set, my study reveals that shareholder derivative suits are far from dead. Shareholders file more shareholder derivative suits than securities class …


Cleaning The Murky Safe Harbor For Forward-Looking Statements: An Inquiry Into Whether Actual Knowledge Of Falsity Precludes The Meaningful Cautionary Statement Defense, Allan Horwich Jan 2010

Cleaning The Murky Safe Harbor For Forward-Looking Statements: An Inquiry Into Whether Actual Knowledge Of Falsity Precludes The Meaningful Cautionary Statement Defense, Allan Horwich

Faculty Working Papers

Congress included a safe harbor for forward-looking statements in the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. This affords certain issuers and other specified persons limited protection from civil liability for damages under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 when the projections or objectives in a forward-looking statement are not realized, i.e., turn out to be false. The safe harbor contains two principal elements, in addition to protection for "immaterial" statements: one prong where projections are accompanied by "meaningful cautionary statements," the second prong where the plaintiff fails to prove that the speaker made the …


Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson Jan 2010

Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article will explore several areas in which judges, hampered by their mathematical ignorance, have permitted numerical analysis to subvert the goals of our legal system. In Part II, I will examine the perversion of the presumption of innocence in paternity cases, where courts make the counter-factual assumption that regardless of the evidence, prior to DNA testing, a suspect has a 50/50 chance of being the father. In Part III, I will explore the unnecessary injection of race into trials involving the statistics of DNA matching, even when race is entirely irrelevant to the particular case. Next, in Part IV, …


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 Jan 2010

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 …


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 Jan 2010

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 …


Securities Class Actions Move North: A Doctrinal And Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Actions In Canada, Adam C. Pritchard, Janis P. Sarra Jan 2010

Securities Class Actions Move North: A Doctrinal And Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Actions In Canada, Adam C. Pritchard, Janis P. Sarra

Articles

The article explores securities class actions involving Canadian issuers since the provinces added secondary market class action provisions to their securities legislation. It examines the development of civil liability provisions, and class proceedings legislation and their effect on one another. Through analyses of the substance and framework of the statutory provisions, the article presents an empirical and comparative examination of cases involving Canadian issuers in both Canada and the United States. In addition, it explores how both the availability and pricing of director and officer insurance have been affected by the potential for secondary market class action liability. The article …


Personal Jurisdiction Over Foreign Directors In Cross-Border Securities Litigation, Hannah L. Buxbaum Jan 2010

Personal Jurisdiction Over Foreign Directors In Cross-Border Securities Litigation, Hannah L. Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


Eliminating Securities Fraud Class Actions Under The Radar, Barbara Black Jan 2009

Eliminating Securities Fraud Class Actions Under The Radar, Barbara Black

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

At least since Basic, Inc. v. Levinson, the business community and many influential scholars have challenged the existence of the securities fraud class action on a variety of grounds. Recently, two proposals have been advanced to "fix" the problem of "abusive" securities fraud class actions. One proposal requires arbitration of all securities fraud class actions; the other eliminates the corporate defendant in most actions. Proponents assert that shareholders should have the right to adopt these proposals through amendment of the company's certificate of incorporation. In reality, adoption of either proposal would substantially curtail, if not eliminate, the securities fraud class …


Reputational Damages In Securities Litigation, Barbara Black Jan 2009

Reputational Damages In Securities Litigation, Barbara Black

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This short paper, originating in remarks made at the Institute for Law and Economic Policy's 15th Annual Conference on Compensation of Plaintiffs in Mass Securities Litigation, addresses an issue that has surfaced post-Dura Pharmaceuticals: can investors recover damages resulting from declines in stock price attributable to the market's reassessment of the integrity of management or the corporation's internal controls? Some finance scholars label these damages as non-recoverable 'collateral damage' that are not attributable to the original fraudulent disclosure. I argue that this position is based on a mischaracterization of the original fraudulent disclosure and that there is no basis in …


Securities Laws In Soap Operas And Telenovelas: Are All My Children Engaged In Securities Fraud?, Elena Marty-Nelson Jan 2009

Securities Laws In Soap Operas And Telenovelas: Are All My Children Engaged In Securities Fraud?, Elena Marty-Nelson

Faculty Scholarship

Securities law images are broadcast to millions worldwide through soap operas and telenovelas. Doctors, and professionals in other fields, have recognized the power of dramatic serials. They have generated a rich body of scholarship demonstrating how these mediums of popular culture impart health messages or effect social change. This author describes some of those empirical studies and suggests that legal scholars conduct similar empirical or ethnographic studies, particularly on the impact of portrayals of complex legal issues such as securities fraud in serials. The author explains differences and similarities between telenovelas and soap operas and compares portrayals of legal issues …