- But not before extracting $8.5 B: “Finding Little Evidence Of Foreclosure Fraud, Feds Give Up” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes; Kevin Funnell] Can Baltimore distinguish vindication from extortion? [Funnell]
- Dear grandstanders in Congress and press: by law AIG’s board had to consider request to join bailout suit [Bainbridge, John Carney]
- “Plaintiff Lawyers in Citigroup Case Seek Big Markup For Outside Attorneys” [Daniel Fisher, more, ABA Journal]
- “Everyone knows” CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) lending was too small in volume to be a major factor in bubble. Is everyone right? [NBER paper, SSRN via Cowen, Tuccille]
- Beware the CFPB’s Civil Investigative Demand (CID) power [Funnell, more]
- “Investor class action system needs review – judge” [Nate Raymond, Reuters]
- “Are the New Wave Say-on-Pay Lawsuits ‘Gaining Steam’?” [Kevin LaCroix]
Posts Tagged ‘securities litigation’
Dodd-Frank “say on pay” litigation
Putting the 2010 bill to work:
Now, lawyers have found a new way to bring lawsuits over executive pay, resulting in a handful of legal settlements. But the settlements to date have produced no changes in executive compensation and no money for investors. In fact, the main financial beneficiary so far has been a small New York law firm that brought the bulk of the cases.
Banking and finance roundup
- FATCA: “Another American Turns in Passport to Protest Idiotic New Banking Regulations” [Matt Welch, earlier]
- Cato president John Allison discusses his new book “The Financial Crisis and the Free-Market Cure” [video, earlier; John Tamny, Forbes]
- “The Unintended Consequences of Cracking Down on Payday Lenders” [A. Barton Hinkle, earlier]
- Trial lawyers’ uses for “say on pay” [Bainbridge] Suits after mergers [Kevin LaCroix on Boris Feldman article]
- Massachusetts law restricting foreclosures is likely to backfire [Anthony Randazzo] “Foreclose on state AGs” [Michael Greve, Law and Liberty]
- ACLU (ACLU?) sues Morgan Stanley over allegedly predatory loans [Althouse] Suing Wells Fargo twice is not very nice [Reynolds Holding, Reuters]
- “More evidence that Dodd-Frank is hurting small banks” [Ammon Simon, earlier]
“Lawyers Extract ‘Merger Tax’ From Shareholders, Study Says”
“The U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform today released a study on merger-related litigation that concludes plaintiff lawyers take advantage of the court system to extract tens of millions of dollars a year in fees from companies at the expense of shareholders. A loophole in the federal law designed to cut down on securities class-action abuses allows lawyers to file suits challenging mergers in multiple state and federal courts, the study found, making it impossible for companies to consolidate the litigation in one place and increasing the odds they’ll pay the lawyers a fee to go away.” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
July 27 roundup
- “Banks push back against lawsuits that target fee-warning signs on ATMs” [NYT via PoL]
- Crash fraud and clinic fraud: organized crime gangs eye insurance money [Dennis Jay, PC360]
- Maryland pit bull ruling endangers dogs that have harmed no one [Wash Times editorial, ABA Journal, earlier] New Jersey town bans dog and cat sales at new pet stores [Asbury Park Press; Brick, N.J.]
- “Cato is mentioned roughly equally by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.” [Caleb Brown]
- “Futile remedies for mass shootings” [Steve Chapman, Reason]
- “After Awful Tragedies, The Campus Bureaucracy Expands” [Harvey Silverglate, Minding the Campus]
- “Delaware judges mean it: Don’t file derivative suit pre-investigation” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
Shareholder lawsuits: “Shark Attack”
The Economist on “Why American firms cannot do deals without being sued”:
In 2005, 39% of M&A deals were challenged by lawsuits, one study found. By 2011 a hefty 96% of acquisitions worth more than $500m were attracting suits…
J. Travis Laster of Delaware’s Chancery Court [has] become an outspoken public critic of “worthless”, “sue-on-every-deal” lawsuits. In March he told one group of plaintiffs’ lawyers: “I don’t think for a moment that 90%—or based on recent numbers, 95%—of deals are the result of a breach of fiduciary duty.”
“Harvard’s Shareholder Rights Project is Wrong”
According to the Harvard Law School online catalog, the SRP is “a newly established clinical program” that “will provide students with the opportunity to obtain hands-on experience with shareholder rights work by assisting public pension funds in improving governance arrangements at publicly traded firms.”
Marty Lipton and others at Wachtell, Lipton don’t like the idea and criticize it here. More at NYT DealBook (via Bainbridge).
Reader J.B. emails to say:
Whatever one thinks of Wachtell’s substantive critique of the attack on classified/staggered boards, it’s kind of interesting for a law school to be promoting a “clinical program” in which the kids get to work for institutional investors with bajillions of dollars in assets (and, you know, the wherewithal to retain sophisticated counsel at market rates) rather than the sort of boring old indigent individuals that are the traditional law school clinic client base.
A different view: Max Kennerly.
February 29 roundup
- Jackpot justice and New Jersey pharmacies (with both a Whitney Houston and a Ted Frank angle) [Fox, PoL, our Jan. 3 post]
- New Mexico: “Trial lawyers object to spaceport limits” [Las Cruces Bulletin]
- Dodd-Frank: too big not to fail [The Economist] Robert Teitelman (The Deal) on new Stephen Bainbridge book Corporate Governance After the Financial Crisis [HuffPo] Securities suits: “trial lawyers probably won’t be able to defend a defective system forever” [WSJ Dealpolitik]
- Uh-oh: U.K. Labour opposition looks at unleashing U.S.-style class actions [Guardian] “U.K. Moves ‘No Win, No Fee’ Litigation Reforms to 2013” [Suzi Ring, Legal Week]
- More on controls on cold medicines as anti-meth measure [Radley Balko, Megan McArdle, Xeni Jardin, earlier here, here, here]
- Recognizable at a distance: “In Germany, a Limp Domestic Economy Stifled by Regulation” [NY Times]
- Fewer lawyers in Congress these days [WSJ Law Blog]
“Class-action lawyers swarm around buyout deals”
Merger announcements often trigger a spate of press releases announcing that securities plaintiff’s firms are “investigating” the situation. Even if the evidence of wrongdoing is absent and the financial analysis thin, lawsuits may be the next step, because that’s where the money is [David Nicklaus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
February 8 roundup
- Popular proposal to curb Congressional insider trading (“STOCK Act”) could have disturbing unintended consequences [John Berlau, CEI “Open Market”] A contrary view: Bainbridge.
- Here’s Joe’s number, he’ll do a good job of suing us: “Some Maryland hospitals recommend lawyers to patients” [Baltimore Sun, Ron Miller]
- Bribing the states to spend: follies of our fiscal federalism, and other themes from Michael Greve’s new book The Upside-Down Constitution [LLL, more, yet more] “Atlas Croaks, Supreme Court Shrugs” [Greve, Charleston Law Review; related, Ted Frank]
- “… Daubert Relevancy is the Sentry That Guards Against the Tyranny of Experts” [David Oliver on new First Circuit opinion or scroll to Jan. 23]
- Goodbye old political tweets, Eric Turkewitz is off to trial;
- State laws squelch election speech, and political class shrugs (or secretly smiles) [George Will]
- Too bad Carlyle Group got scared off promising experiment to revamp corporate governance to curb role of litigation [Ted Frank, Gordon Smith] AAJ should try harder to use people’s quotes in context [Bainbridge]