Overall
Key cases
Industries
Intellectual Property
Labor & Employment
Corporate
Practice Areas
Securities
-
May 10, 2013
Employer Scare Tactics May Chill SEC Whistleblower Program
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new whistleblower office is off to an auspicious start, but attorneys say the program could suffer if the agency fails to punish firms that silence tipsters through unfair employment agreements.
-
May 10, 2013
Atty Fee Award In $219M Madoff Investor Deal OK'd By Judge
Class action attorneys on Thursday won their contentious bid for a cut of the landmark $219 million settlement with a Bank of New York Mellon Corp.-owned investment adviser and others that investors had accused of pouring client funds into Bernard Madoff's operations despite warning signs about his scam.
-
May 10, 2013
Star Scientific Shareholders Sue Over Drug Claims
Star Scientific and its board of directors Thursday were slapped with a derivative shareholder action in Virginia federal court alleging the company falsely linked John Hopkins University to one of its clinical tests and delayed releasing information about a federal investigation of the company.
-
May 10, 2013
First Southwest Ends Muni Investment Bid-Rigging Claims
A New York federal judge on Friday approved a voluntary dismissal of First Southwest Co. from a spate of cases rolled into multidistrict litigation accusing several financial institutions of rigging bids on municipal derivatives.
-
May 10, 2013
Trustee’s Objection Leads To Peregrine Class Action Stay
A federal judge in Chicago on Friday put a hold on class action litigation over Peregrine Financial Group Inc.’s failure after the estate’s bankruptcy trustee found potentially “viable claims” against JPMorgan Chase & Co. and U.S. Bank N.A. over the handling of customer funds.
-
May 10, 2013
ACA Financial Can't Quash Bond Dispute In Miss.
A Mississippi federal judge on Thursday denied a bid to dismiss an ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. policyholder's putative class action over the insurer's refusal to pay for previously covered bonds, saying he's awaiting a New York state appeals court's ruling in a related dispute.
-
May 10, 2013
Q&A With Reed Smith's Yvan-Claude Pierre
Much attention has been made of the recent IPOs of name brand social media companies, such as Facebook and Groupon. Yet what a healthy economy needs is for less well-known companies to go public, such as KaloBios and Stemline Therapeutics, says Yvan-Claude Pierre, chairman of Reed Smith LLP's capital markets group.
-
May 10, 2013
BofA Says $25B Mortgage Deal Bars NY AG's Suit
Bank of America Corp. on Tuesday pushed back against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s plan to sue it and Wells Fargo & Co. for noncompliance with last year's $25 billion mortgage settlement, saying it first must be given time to cure any alleged violations.
-
May 10, 2013
Hess Shuffles Management Plan As Proxy Showdown Looms
Hess Corp. outlined plans Friday to separate the roles of CEO and chairman and appoint a onetime General Electric Co. executive to lead its board, the oil company's latest play in a fiery fight with an activist hedge fund.
-
May 10, 2013
$8.5B BofA Deal Negotiators Fight Investors' Jury Request
The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and the 22 institutional investors who negotiated an $8.5 billion mortgage-backed securities settlement with Bank of America Corp. blasted objecting investors' demand for a jury trial Thursday, saying it was clear that only a New York state judge could evaluate the deal.
-
May 10, 2013
Icahn, Southeastern Put Up Bid Against $24B Dell Buyout
In the latest chapter in an on-going battle for control of Dell Inc., the company's two largest shareholders — Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management Inc. — made an offer Friday challenging an earlier $24.4 billion private equity-backed bid and threatening legal action.
-
May 10, 2013
Aveo Hid Kidney Drug's Higher Death Risk, Shareholder Says
Aveo Pharmaceuticals Inc. was hit with a proposed class action Thursday accusing it of hiding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that its kidney cancer treatment drug Tivozanib increased patients' risk of death more than competitors and that Aveo's trials for the drug were inadequate.
-
May 10, 2013
Ex-CEO Raided Entertainment Co.'s Assets, RICO Suit Says
Entertainment company ValCom Inc. launched suit in New Jersey federal court Friday accusing its ousted former president and CEO Vince Vellardita and other top brass of defrauding ValCom out of millions of shares in violation of the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act.
-
May 9, 2013
Mutual Benefits Exec Loses Bid For New Trial On $837M Scam
A Florida federal judge on Thursday denied a new trial for a former Mutual Benefits Corp. executive convicted of money laundering and obstructing justice in an alleged $837 million insurance investment scam, saying she did not see evidence of prejudice in the verdict.
-
May 9, 2013
Quinn Predicts Damages In Clearwire-Sprint Trial
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP's John Quinn thinks he has a rarity: a merger lawsuit with real damages at the end of the road.
-
May 9, 2013
Plains Shareholders Can't Block $6.9B Freeport Buy
A Delaware Chancery judge on Thursday stymied an attempt by Plains Exploration & Production Co. shareholders to hold up Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.'s proposed $6.9 billion buyout of the energy exploration firm, denying the investors' motion for a preliminary injunction.
-
May 9, 2013
Wells Fargo Ducks Shareholder Suit Claiming It Deceived FHA
A California federal judge Thursday tossed a shareholder derivative class action claiming Wells Fargo's board of directors knew the bank was falsifying loan levels in order to obtain Federal Housing Administration insurance, saying the plaintiffs hadn't shown the directors knew about the purported activity.
-
May 9, 2013
Arthrocare Exec Cops To $400M Securities Fraud Scheme
A former executive of surgical instrument maker ArthroCare Corp. on Thursday admitted he participated in a scheme to inflate company earnings by tens of millions of dollars and hid sales terms and commission payment information, leading to a $400 million loss for investors.
-
May 9, 2013
Bryan Cave, AmEx Unit End Tax Shelter Class Action
Bryan Cave LLP and a unit of American Express Co. have reached a settlement in a putative class action over their roles in marketing life insurance-based pension plans that allegedly created an illegal tax shelter, according to documents filed Thursday in Texas federal court.
-
May 9, 2013
RBC's Discovery Bid In Wash-Trading Suit Falls Short
A New York federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Royal Bank of Canada's bid to force the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to release certain notes related to its investigation of the bank, ruling that the agency wasn't required to provide the documents since they are internal communications.
Expert Analysis
-
The Fact Pattern Behind The Boeing Class Action Grounding
Defense counsel no doubt will be emboldened by the Seventh Circuit’s affirmation of the dismissal of a securities class action against Boeing in light of baseless confidential witness allegations. Simple themes emerge from this and similar cases, says Bryan House of Foley & Lardner LLP.
-
A Narrow Interpretation Of Section 546(e)
The approach by the Northern District of Illinois in Grede v. FCStone LLC represents a departure from the Second Circuit’s approach in Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. v. Alfa SAB de CV, in which the court of appeals broadly interpreted the language of Bankruptcy Code section 546(e) to protect a transaction that did not involve the traditional purchase or sale of securities, albeit under a distinguishable set of facts, says Matthew Kremer of Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP.
-
Global Securities Enforcement: The Playbook Keeps Changing
There has been a marked increase in global securities enforcement activities by regulators in the U.S., U.K., Canada and the EU. Continued cooperation and coordination in enforcement activities will be required to seamlessly address the desire to strengthen global regulatory initiatives aimed at harmonizing and centralizing international securities regulation to create safer, more fundamentally sound financial markets for investors, say attorneys with Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP.
-
Rule 12(e): What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing
The recent evolution of case law governing the standard for Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss reveals that Rule 12(e) serves no practical purpose in modern pleading practice, says Nathan Kipp of Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
-
Litigation Support At A Crossroads
Despite recession-driven cost pressures that have resulted in the downsizing of nonlawyer personnel at law firms, many litigation support departments are growing. In a recent survey, half of respondents indicated that their function has grown in size in the past three years, and more than half of respondents indicated that current staffing levels are inadequate for the projected needs of the coming year, say experts at Epiq Systems and Georgetown University Law Center.
-
The Business End Of Supreme Court's Current Term
This term marks a continuation of the Roberts court trend of close attention to business issues. From affirmative action and class actions to tort litigation, government enforcement and intellectual property, almost one half of this term’s argued cases are of interest to the business community, say Cliff Sloan and David Foster of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
-
An Insider’s View Of The FCPA Resource Guide
Recent commentary from the deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, Fraud Section, suggests that the government’s FCPA resource guide — rather than being an outgrowth of mounting criticism from the business community, defense bar and other legal commentators concerning the FCPA’s troubling ambiguity and opaque enforcement policies — was more a product of international treaty obligations, says Caryn Trombino of Perkins Coie LLP.
-
Unregistered Brokers May Bring Aiding And Abetting Liability
A pair of related U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission settled enforcement actions recently demonstrated the potential liability of using an unregistered consultant. While these cases involve a private equity manager and its funds, they are significant to all private issuers of securities — including investment, real estate, venture capital and private equity funds, as well as operating companies, say Peter LaVigne and Elizabeth Shea Fries of Goodwin Procter LLP.
-
Forum Selection Clauses In The Intra-Corporate Litigation Era
The lessons of the Northern District of California ruling in Galaviz v. Berg inform that corporations will do well to ensure that shareholders consent to the adoption of a forum selection provision within their governing documents. This can be achieved in a few ways, says Onome Okpewho of McCarter & English LLP.
-
Arguing For Arbitration Clauses In Customer Agreements
In a landmark decision with potentially wide implications, a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority hearing panel recently ruled that Charles Schwab & Company Inc. could include a provision in its customer agreements prohibiting customers from bringing class action claims against Schwab and requiring customers to arbitrate their claims. The decision should come as welcome news to brokerage firms and likely will prompt other firms to amend their customer agreements to include similar clauses, say Bradley Bondi and Jason Halper of Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP.