Securities Litigation Against Life Sciences Companies: Eleven Takeaways from 2021
Securities class actions against life sciences companies are almost always second-order problems. The first-order problem is a business or regulatory setback that, when disclosed by the company or a third party, is followed by a stock price drop. Following the decline, plaintiffs’ class-action attorneys will search the company’s previous public statements in search of inconsistencies between past positive comments and the current negative development. In most cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys will seek to show that any arguable inconsistency amounts to fraud—that is, they will claim that the earlier statement was knowingly or recklessly false or misleading. Where a company makes the challenged statement in a public offering document (that is, a registration statement or prospectus), plaintiffs need only show that the statement was materially false or misleading, not that it was made with scienter, i.e., the requisite state of mind.
Best Practices for Minute-Taking: Three Lessons from Recent Caremark Decisions
As has been frequently noted on this page, the Delaware Supreme Court’s landmark 2019 decision, Marchand v. Barnhill, marked the beginning of a series of cases in which Delaware courts refused to dismiss shareholder derivative actions alleging oversight breaches—so-called Caremark claims, which are often quoted as “possibly the most difficult theory in corporat[e] law” on which to bring a successful lawsuit. Typically following a books and records demand, these cases shine a spotlight not only on the oversight that boards perform, but also on the manner in which that oversight is documented in a company’s formal records. This post reviews, from a corporate record-keeping perspective, themes drawn from a selection of recent cases in which Delaware courts permitted cases to proceed on Caremark theories and implications for best practices in light of these themes. (more…)
The Refined Demand Futility Standard Takes Shape
Over the past several months, a number of decisions released by the Delaware courts have begun to grapple with the new Zuckerberg three-part demand futility standard announced by the Delaware Supreme Court in September. Many cases spotlight the need to assess demand futility on a director-by-director basis. But at least one recent decision has highlighted another aspect of the test, and instead turns on the need to assess demand futility on a transaction-by-transaction basis. In In re Vaxart, Inc. Stockholder Litigation, Vice Chancellor Fioravanti dismissed several claims from a shareholder derivative suit purportedly filed on behalf of Vaxart, Inc. because the plaintiffs failed to allege that a majority of the directors received a material personal benefit or faced a substantial likelihood of liability from the specific transaction that would have been the subject of the pre-suit demand. (more…)
Chancery Court Issues Rare Finding of Wrongful Refusal of Demand – Followed By A Reminder of Why Such Findings Are So Uncommon
On October 29, 2021, the Delaware Court of Chancery issued a rare opinion holding that plaintiffs had succeeded in pleading that a board of directors wrongfully had refused their demand to pursue certain claims. Following short on its heels on November 8, 2021 was another decision illustrating why such opinions are so rare, and the high burden plaintiffs must meet in order adequately plead wrongful refusal. (more…)