Last week, NERA Economic Consulting released its latest mid-year report on trends in class-action securities filings. The trend most are mentioning is the decline in the pace of securities settlements, coupled with the fact that settlement amounts remain high. But there are a number of other interesting observations that are worth mentioning. Among them:
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As most of you following class action-related news know by now, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari to review another class action decision: the Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds v. Amgen, Inc. (Hat tip to Paul Karlsgodt of the reliably great ClassActionBlawg for getting the scoop.) As usual…
So, unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard that JP Morgan lost some money last week. And, as one might expect, with a $2 billion loss, lots of people have opinions. One of those is Yale Law Professor Jonathan Macey, who wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (behind a…
For fourteen years, from 1970 to 1984, more than 150,000 people bought stock in Petro-Lewis and its limited partnerships. Late in that period, the price of gas declined, and Petro-Lewis had to borrow money to to pay out distributions. In 1984, it announced that it was in severe financial straits, and cut its distributions by…
Today’s case, Katz v. Gerardi (10th Cir. 2011), involves a pair of securities class actions that were challenging a merger that had gone through (a currently burgeoning field for securities class action lawyers). The case involved a real estate investment trust (REIT), in which the two plaintiffs (Jack Katz and Infinity Clark…
This month’s look at "classic" class action scholarship focuses on the article Nonpecuniary Class Action Settlements by Geoffrey Miller and Lori Singer. Like the name suggests, nonpecuniary settlements are settlements that don’t require cash payments to the absent class members. According to Miller and Singer, they include:
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In the 1990s, a group of attorneys sued a number of securities broker-dealers nationwide. They alleged that the broker-dealers had executed a number of securities orders at the "National Best Bid and Offer" (NBBO) price–which would provide a customer with the lowest available ask or the highest available bid for a security–an industry-wide…
My colleague Samantha Thompson has written a post for McGuireWoods’s government-investigations group blog Subject to Inquiry on Erica John Fund v. Halliburton. It’s a good summary, and worth a read.
It’s June, which means the Supreme Court is issuing a spate of opinions to finish out its 2010-11 term. Yesterday, the Court announced its opinion for Erica John Fund v. Halliburton. It’s a short opinion, and a unanimous one. (Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion for the 9-0 Court.)
As you may remember…
The caper was a simple one: the money was just sitting there unclaimed, so Kevin Waltzer would claim it.
In this case, the unclaimed money was sitting in common funds for three securities class-action settlements–In re Nasdaq Market-Makers Antitrust Litigation, In re Cendant Corporation Litigation, and In re BankAmerica Corporation Securities Litigation…
