Does the Plaintiff Matter?: An Empirical Analysis of Lead Plaintiffs in Securities Class Actions

With the enactment of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLR) the U.S. Congress introduced sweeping substantive and procedural reforms for securities class actions. A central provision of the Act is the lead plaintiff provision, which creates a rebuttable presumption that the investor with the largest financial interest in a securities fraud class action should be appointed the lead plaintiff for the suit. The lead plaintiff provision was adopted to encourage a class member with a large financial stake to become the class representative. Congress expected that such a plaintiff would actively monitor the conduct of a securities fraud class action so as to reduce the litigation agency costs that may arise when class counsel\u27s interests diverge from those of the shareholder class. Now, more than ten years after the enactment of the lead plaintiff provision, the claim that the lead plaintiff, and particularly the lead plaintiff that is an institutional investor, is a more effective monitor of class counsel in securities fraud class actions continues to be intuitively appealing, but remains unproven. In this study, Professors Cox and Thomas inquire anecdotally and empirically whether the lead plaintiff provision has performed as projected. The anecdotal evidence they uncover is mixed: in some instances demonstrating the virtues of the lead plaintiff provision, while in others showing that the provision has encountered difficulties, including hesitance among institutional lead plaintiffs to take on the burden of serving as lead plaintiff (though recently more institutional investors are taking on the role of lead plaintiff) and allegations of pay-to-play schemes between plaintiffs\u27 law firms and potential lead plaintiffs. Professors Cox and Thomas then conduct a series of statistical analyses of the lead plaintiff provision\u27s costs and benefits. Surprisingly, their results indicate that the ratio of settlement amounts to estimated provable losses in securities class actions---the most important indicator of whether investors have been compensated for their damages---has been lower since the passage of the PSLRA and that settlement size has not increased since the passage of PSLRA. However, they also find that the presence of an institutional investor increases the dollar amount of settlements in those cases in which they appear, suggesting that the current trend for institutional investors to be lead plaintiffs in securities class actions will positively affect average settlement size in such actions in the future. Their analysis also sheds new light on the relative impacts other types of lead plaintiffs, such as individuals versus an aggregation of individuals, have on the outcome of settlements. They conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of their findings

Jaramillo v. Ramos, 136 Nev. Adv. Op. 17 (Apr. 2, 2020)

The Court found a plaintiff is not required to provide expert testimony to survive a defendant’s summary judgment motion when the plaintiff is relying on the res ipsa loquitur statute’s prima facie case of negligence. Rather, plaintiff must only establish facts that entitle it to a rebuttable presumption of negligence under Nevada’s res ipsa loquitur statute. Whether a defendant can rebut the presumption through their own expert testimony or evidence is a question of fact for the jury

Jackpot Justice: The Value of Inefficient Litigation

Litigation seems to be a Pareto-ineffcient outcome of pretrial bargaining; however, this paper shows that litigation can be the outcome of rational behavior by a litigant and her attorney. If the attorney has more information than his client concerning the characteristics of the lawsuit, the client can use litigation as a way of extracting information. I show that, counterintuitively, litigation will occur only when the plaintiff is pessimistic about her prospects at trial. Even if the plaintiff could obtain a higher payoff from bargaining than from litigation-without-bargaining, bargaining may not occur in equilibrium. The plaintiff is more likely to sue if she is more pessimistic about winning damage in court and if litigation is more risky. Litigation is less likely to occur if the plaintiff receives third party financing for litigation

Case Note: Transportation Law - Urban Mass Transportation Act - The Absence of Statutory Provisions Relating to Standing and Judicial Review Does Not Preclude a Claimant from Seeking Relief in Federal Court

This case note by Terry L. Barnich analyzes the Seventh Circuit\u27s decision in Bradford School Bus Transit, Inc. v. Chicago Transit Authority, 537 F.2d 943 (7th Cir. 1976), cert denied, 97 S. Ct. 797 (1977). The plaintiff, a private bus company, sought a declaration that the Chicago Transit Authority violated section 1602(a) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act when it competed with the private bus line for a contract with the Chicago Board of Education. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois declared that the plaintiff lacked standing under the Act and dismissed the complaint. The Seventh Circuit held that plaintiff had sufficient standing to sue under the Act. It concluded that plaintiff had adequately alleged an unjust injury due to agency action, and had sufficiently demonstrated that its interests were protected by the Act\u27s relevant provision. Nevertheless, it refused to review the administrative action because complaint procedures and remedies were available and plaintiff was required to exhaust those administrative remedies

Surviving Spouse\u27s Distributive Share of Amendable Trusts

Purcell v. Cleveland Trust Co., 200 N.E.2d 602, 28 Ohio Op. 2d 262 (P. Ct. 1964). Approximately three years before her death in 1960, plaintiff\u27s wife created an amendable and revocable inter vivos trust, naming defendant as trustee. The formally drawn instrument provided for pour-over from her simultaneously executed will, however, a specific bequest to the trust was apparently never made. After his wife\u27s death, plaintiff, choosing to exercise his statutory prerogative of taking against his wife\u27s will: demanded that defendant trustee pay over to h i from the corpus of the inter vivos trust the one-half share which he claimed was due him under Ohio law. Upon the trustee\u27s refusal to accede, plaintiff brought an action in the Probate Court of Cuyahoga County asking for a declaratory judgment establishing his right to receive a distributive share from the trust corpus. The court sustained the right of plaintiff to one-half of the fund by virtue of his election to take against the will

Misassigning Income: The Supreme Court and Attorneys\u27 Fees

This past term\u27s Supreme Court decision in Commissioner v. Banks and Commissioner v. Banaitis distorts foundational principles, known as assignment of income law, which help identify the person who must report income for federal tax purposes. The Court holds that assignment of income principles require a plaintiff to report as income the portion of a recovery paid to the plaintiffs attorney as a contingent fee. As a result, the plaintiff is taxed at excessively high rates, which may in some cases equal or exceed a confiscatory 100%. Taxing the plaintiff on the attorney-fee portion of a recovery also undermines the objective of federal fee-shifting statutes, which is to enable a prevailing plaintiff to act as a private attorney general by employing an attorney without cost. Although recent legislation changes the result in the future for specified categories of litigation, including a wide variety of civil rights and employment claims, there remain significant classes of cases, including nonphysical torts, physical torts with punitive damages, and environmental statutes with fee-shifting provisions, to which this recent legislation does not apply and in which plaintiffs will continue to be taxed unfairly under the Court\u27s decision

Six Degrees of Separation: Attribution Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in OBB Personenverkehr AG v. Sachs

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) generally prevents foreign sovereigns from falling within the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, subject to exceptions the FSIA lists. This commentary analyzes BB Personenverkehr AG v. Sachs, a case before the Supreme Court on the question of whether the commercial activities exception of the FSIA applies when only one element of a plaintiff\u27s claim is based upon commercial activity occurring in the United States and whether that sale can be attributed to a foreign sovereign. In this case, the plaintiff purchased a rail pass through an online, third-party travel agent. While traveling abroad and using the rail service, the plaintiff suffered severe physical injuries. The plaintiff then sued in U.S. courts for damages resulting from those injuries, arguing that the purchase of the ticket constituted commercial activity and that the ticket was sold by an agent of the rail service. The Author reviews the facts of the case and current law and concludes that the Court should rule in favor of the petitioners and hold that the sale of the ticket does meet the commercial-activity exception of the FSIA but that because a third-party sold the ticket, that action cannot be attributed to the state-owned rail service

Rights, Wrongs, and Recourse in the Law of Torts

Cardozo\u27s opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co.\u27 hinges on a stark assertion about rights and wrongs: A plaintiff has no right of action unless she can show \u27a wrong\u27 to herself; i.e., a violation of her own right. Cardozo himself made this principle the core of his analysis, yet scholars typically regard it as impenetrable, circular, vacuous, or, as Posner put it, eloquent bluff. Small wonder, then, that readers typically turn to reasonable foreseeability as the essence of the case. Leading scholars treat Palsgraf as a proximate cause case, despite Cardozo\u27s pronouncement that W[the law of causation, remote or proximate, is thus foreign to the case before us., Though Palsgraf is widely regarded as the most famous case in American tort law, Cardozo\u27s own reasoning in Palsgraf is typically ignored or derided, but not explained. The facts of Palsgraf may be peculiar, but its core principle is pervasive: For all torts, courts reject a plaintiffs claim when the defendant\u27s conduct, even if a wrong to a third party, was not a wrong to the plaintiff herself. For example, an injured plaintiff can win in fraud only if she was defrauded, in defamation only if she was defamed, in trespass only if her land rights were violated, and so on. Courts reach these results even where the defendant acted tortiously, the plaintiff suffered a real injury, and the plaintiffs injury was reasonably foreseeable. The legal rule upon which these cases rely is that which our scholarly tradition treats so ambivalently in Palsgraf: A plaintiff cannot win unless the defendant\u27s conduct was a wrong relative to her, i.e., unless her right was violated. I shall call this principle the substantive standing rule and shall show that it is a fundamental feature of tort law

PENYELESAIAN KASUS SENGKETA TANAH PERKARA NOMOR: 233/PDT.G/2022/PN.KPN

Disputes occur when one party feels disadvantaged by another party and conveys this dissatisfaction to the second party. Land plays a major role in development dynamics. To find out about the Execution and Settlement of Land Dispute Cases Case Number: 233/Pdt.G/PN.Kpn. Researchers conduct research using empirical/juridical empirical methods. Meanwhile, the approach method used is a socio-legal approach. The process of resolving the land settlement case number: 233/Pdt.G/2022/PN.Kpn is through a litigation process where in this case, the Plaintiff filed a lawsuit against defendants I, II, III, and IV to the court because they were aware of the existence of Objects related to the landscape of this land. In the process of preparing a lawsuit, in-depth research and analysis should be carried out in order to avoid the possibility of premature lawsuits, unclear plaintiff lawsuits (Obscuur Libel) and plaintiff lawsuits lacking parties (Plurum Litis Consortium

Res Judicata: Prior Adjudication of Negligence Bars Relitigation of That Issue by Defendant to Former Action

Applying state substantive law, the Fourth Circuit held that a prior adjudication of negligence in an action brought against the present plaintiff was res judicata, even though defendant was not a party to the former action. The court discarded the mutuality rule and denied relitigation on the ground of effecting the policy of res judicata without impairing the litigant\u27s constitutional right to a day in court, but failed to acknowledge the nature and extent of its investigation of plaintiff\u27s former defense