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Reforming The Securities Class Action: On Deterrence And Its Implementation, John C. Coffee Jr.
Reforming The Securities Class Action: On Deterrence And Its Implementation, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Securities class actions impose enormous penalties, but they achieve little compensation and only limited deterrence. This is because of a basic circularity underlying the securities class action: When damages are imposed on the corporation, they essentially fall on diversified shareholders, thereby producing mainly pocket-shifting wealth transfers among shareholders. The current equilibrium benefits corporate insiders, insurers, and plaintiffs' attorneys, but not investors. The appropriate answer to this problem is not to abandon securities litigation, but to shift the incidence of its penalties so that, in the secondary market context, they fall less on the corporation and more on those actors who …
The Future Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act: Or, Why The Fat Lady Has Not Yet Sung, John C. Coffee Jr.
The Future Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act: Or, Why The Fat Lady Has Not Yet Sung, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Much commentary about securities litigation shares the implicit premise that the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (Reform Act) is, for better or worse, a fait accompli – that is, legislation whose meaning is fixed and whose impact, while still debatable, is not contingent on future events. This Article sees it differently: the Reform Act is more like wet clay that has been shaped into an approximation of a human form by an apprentice craftsmen and has now been turned over to the master sculptor for the details that will spell the difference between high art and merely competent …