Rebutting Fraud On The Market
“Rebutting Fraud on the Market,” an article by Akin Gump litigation partners Scott Barnard, James Benjamin, Douglass Maynard and Michelle Reed and associate Matthew Lloyd, has been published by Law360.
The article discusses a district court judge’s July 25, 2015, opinion in the class action securities arena—The Erica P. John Fund Inc. et al. v. Halliburton Co. et al.—which the authors describe as:
“a bellwether among securities class actions due to its treatment of novel issues regarding, among other things, a defendant’s ability to disprove reliance — i.e., a causal link between alleged misrepresentations and an eventual drop in stock prices upon correction — for purposes of class certification.”
The article discusses the four elements set forth in Basic v. Levinson by which the fraud-on-the-market presumption in favor of reliance is rebuttable, a recent U.S. Supreme Court holding on rebuttable presumption and the July 25 opinion’s treatment of “one of the key questions left open after the Supreme Court’s ruling: What level of proof is necessary to rebut this fraud-on-the-market presumption?”
The article, which was based on a client alert (readable here), was also run on Columbia Law School’s Blue Sky Blog, which covers corporations and capital markets.
To read the full article, please click here.
