Josh Yount, a litigation partner in Mayer Brown's Chicago office and a member of the firm's top-ranked Supreme Court and Appellate practice, focuses his practice on appellate litigation, class certification defense, and securities law. With experience successfully representing a wide variety of businesses, he offers clients sophisticated legal analysis, careful strategic thinking, and vigorous advocacy.
With all of the attention on last week’s Amgen decision, another interesting decision addressing the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance in securities fraud actions may have escaped notice. In GAMCO Investors, Inc. v. Vivendi, S.A. (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 28, 2013), Judge Scheindlin found that the defendant had rebutted the presumption of reliance as to a group of related… Continue Reading
Today, in Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, No. 11-1085, the Supreme Court held that proof of materiality is not a prerequisite for class certification in a securities fraud class action under Section 10(b), even though materiality is a predicate of the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance. The opinion for the majority of… Continue Reading
I previously blogged about the Second Circuit’s troubling decision in NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund v. Goldman Sachs & Co. (pdf), 693 F.3d 145 (2d Cir. 2012), which invented a “class standing” doctrine allowing a named plaintiff in a class action to assert Securities Act claims regarding securities that he or she never purchased. In the… Continue Reading
A recent decision from the Delaware Supreme Court is a reminder that the members of a mandatory class—one in which the class isn’t guaranteed opt-out rights—sometimes may be given the right to opt out in order to pursue their own individual actions. The decision, In re Celera Corp. Shareholder Litigation (pdf), addressed a class settlement of… Continue Reading
On Friday, the Supreme Court granted review in three consolidated cases: Chadbourne & Parke LLP v. Troice, No. 12-79, Willis of Colorado v. Troice, No. 12-86, and Proskauer Rose LLP v. Troice, No. 12-88. The Court’s decision will clarify when the federal Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (“SLUSA”) preempts state-law securities class actions. After Congress… Continue Reading
A few months ago, I posted about a Second Circuit decision that threatens to open the floodgates to securities class actions, NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund v. Goldman Sachs & Co., 693 F.3d 145 (2d Cir. 2012). In that decision, the Second Circuit ruled that even though a plaintiff in an individual action may assert… Continue Reading
The Supreme Court’s 2012-13 term is shaping up to be an important one for class action law. Last month, the Court heard argument on the same day in two potentially significant cases. Comcast Corp. v. Behrend concerns whether plaintiffs may obtain class certification without introducing admissible evidence (including expert testimony) that damages can be proven… Continue Reading
One oddity of the law in the Second Circuit is the unbalanced standard of review that the court sometimes applies to class certification decisions. On a dozen or so occasions over the last twenty years, the Second Circuit has proclaimed that it is “noticeably less deferential when the district court has denied class status than… Continue Reading
The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in a case that may have a significant impact on how district courts resolve class certification fights in securities fraud cases. The issue in Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds is whether a class can be certified if the alleged misrepresentations constituting the fraud are… Continue Reading
Can a plaintiff who bought a security in one offering bring a class action on behalf of purchasers in other offerings if the plaintiff alleges a misstatement common to all of the offerings? In cases under Sections 11 and 12 of the 1933 Securities Act—particularly those involving mortgage-backed securities—the consensus view had been that a… Continue Reading