Securities Docket

The Manhattan Institute’s Center for Legal Policy has a new report out about litigation in the state of Louisiana, and as usual it pulls no punches.  According to an updated report in the CLP’s Trial Lawyers Inc. series entitled “Louisiana Litigators: While People Leave the Pelican State, Attorneys Thrive,” while Louisiana continues to lose residents, [...]

Q: What’s better than creating and maintaining a running list of all Madoff-related investor and feeder fund lawsuits (which we had on our lengthy to-do list)?
A: Having someone else do it!
Thank you to Kevin LaCroix of the D&O Diary for introducing today “The List: Madoff Investor and Feeder Fund Litigation,” a table of all of [...]

A class action lawsuit has been filed in the SDNY against against Madoff feeder-fund Tremont Group Holdings, several affiliated entities (including OppenheimerFunds and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.), and KPMG, Tremont’s auditor.  The lawsuit, filed by law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro on behalf of individuals and groups that invested with Tremont, alleges that the defendants [...]

The latest Madoff-related class action to be filed is against Fairfield Greenwich Group.  The case was filed today in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, and alleges breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and unjust enrichment by Fairfield Greenwich Group and several of its principals.  The plaintiffs in the case are Pasha S. Anwar and [...]

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen (E.D. Mich.) today approved a 15% legal fee ($45 million) in the $303 million settlement in the securities class action against General Motors Corp, the AP reported.  Attorneys for the class had initially requested 19%, but that request was met with an objection from the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System [...]

The University of California announced today that the distribution of the over $7 billion settlement fund in the Enron securities class action has begun.  The University of California serves as lead plaintiff for Enron investors in the class action, and is represented by the law firm Coughlin Stoia.
The school announced that today’s distribution is the [...]

Yesterday, NERA Economic Consulting released its 2008 Trends in Securities Class Actions, a report that is based on more than 15 years of NERA research on case filings and settlements in shareholder class actions. The report includes data through December 14, 2008 for case filings and through December 31, 2008 for settlements.  The NERA report [...]

Securities Docket has obtained a copy of Kellner v. Madoff, belived to be the first class action filed against Bernard Madoff, his firm, and others related to an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme.  The complaint largely tracks the information asserted in the SEC and DOJ filings last week with respect to the details of the [...]

On Friday, December 12, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the securities class action against Inspire Pharmaceuticals.  The court found that plaintiffs failed to raise the “strong inference” of wrongful intent that was necessary to support their securities fraud claims.
The Fourth Circuit stated that in Tellabs, the Supreme Court made clear that raising [...]

The Supreme Court today denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed in September 2008 by Merix Corp. (MERX), which sought to bring a halt to a securities class action brought against it after it announced a downward revision of projected sales for its circuit board products in 2004.  The 2004 complaint against Merix [...]