Ninth Circuit affirms Milbank dismissal of securities class action claims seeking several hundred million dollars
Milbank represented Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Thomas Weisel Partners, LLC, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Jefferies & Company, Inc. in a securities class action asserting claims under Sections 11 and 12 of the Securities Act of 1933. The complaint alleged that the registration statement and prospectus accompanying a follow-on equity offering contained materially false and misleading statements. The plaintiff sought several hundred million dollars in damages.
We successfully moved to dismiss the claims against all of our clients, and defended the dismissal on appeal to the Ninth Circuit and against a motion for rehearing. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal and denied the request for a rehearing.
After several favorable rulings in the trial court and on appeal, Milbank convinces class action securities plaintiffs to voluntarily dismiss all of their claims
Milbank represented The Capital Group Companies, Inc. and its affiliates in a securities class action in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. CRMC is the world's largest mutual fund adviser and manages the American Funds family of mutual funds.
The plaintiffs, seeking to represent a purported class of shareholders in eight American Funds, alleged that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by failing to disclose that the company made revenue sharing payments or directed fund brokerage payments to broker-dealers that sold the funds' shares. We moved to dismiss the complaint, and the district court dismissed the complaint with prejudice, holding that the plaintiffs' claims were barred by the statute of limitations. The plaintiffs appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The court of appeals remanded the case back to the district court for reconsideration in light of the new statute of limitations standard set out by the Supreme Court in Merck & Co., Inc. v. Reynolds, 130 S. Ct. 1784 (2010). On remand, the district court again held that the plaintiffs' claims were timebarred, this time under the new Merck standard. The plaintiffs again appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit ruled that while the plaintiffs' complaint was not time-barred, it affirmed the dismissal on grounds that plaintiffs had failed to plead scienter. The court of appeals again remanded back to the district court to allow the plaintiffs an opportunity to amend their complaint. On October 24, 2012, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims.
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