- SCOTUS by 9-0, Ginsburg writing, agrees with Cato amicus (and disagrees with Sen. Grassley amicus) that Dodd-Frank doesn’t cover “whistleblowers” who never told the SEC [Digital Realty Trust v. Somers: Ilya Shapiro/Harvard Law Review, Joel Nolette/Least Dangerous Blog, earlier]
- Claim: “rolling back bank regulations is a good way to trigger a financial meltdown.” How much truth in that? [George Selgin, Cato]
- Crosstown hypocrisy: a closer look at the cities who tell judges and bond investors as needed that their infrastructure will or won’t face future destruction owing to climate change [Dan Walters, CalMatters; Jay Newman, Wall Street Journal, earlier]
- Mortgage systems in Canada, Germany appear to operate with less risk and lower default rates. Would Americans accept the trade-offs? [Arnold Kling]
- Tag-along private suits following regulatory action, familiar in US courts, now crop up in Australia [Kevin LaCroix]
- Regrettable Lovenheim ruling turned liberal shareholder groups into boardroom players [Prof. Bainbridge] The law of corporate social responsibility and shareholder accountability [same]
Posts Tagged ‘securities litigation’
Banking and finance roundup
- D.C. Circuit’s en banc decision upholding constitutionality of CFPB disappointing but not surprising. On to SCOTUS [Ilya Shapiro, Aaron Nielson, Jonathan Adler]
- Big thinking under way at the SEC could replace securities class action sector with free contract: “The SEC should authorize mandatory arbitration of shareholder class action lawsuits” [Bainbridge, Benjamin Bain/Bloomberg News (noting that broker dealers have long been free to use arbitration clauses)]
- Milberg Weiss founder Melvyn Weiss dies at 82 [ABA Journal, our coverage over the years of Weiss and his firm, @PaulHorwitz (“Give generously, and to the right people, so that your NYT obit can be a glowing apologia despite a few inconvenient facts.”)]
- Here come the shareholder derivative suits over sleazy-boss #MeToo scandals [Kevin LaCroix] “NERA: 2017 Securities Suits Filed at ‘Record Pace'” [same]
- Rogoff rebuttals: “More Evidence of the High Collateral Damage of a War on Cash” [Lawrence White, Cato, earlier] “Money as coined liberty” [David R. Henderson]
- Quotas/targets for percentages of women, disabled and indigenous persons on Canadian corporate boards? [Terence Corcoran/Financial Post, more]
Banking and finance roundup
- Big news: U.S. Department of Justice changes sides in Lucia v. SEC, challenge to constitutionality of SEC use of administrative law judges [Thaya Brook Knight, Cato; Knight and Ilya Shapiro in August; Kevin Daley, Daily Caller]
- Cyan v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund, oral argument Nov. 28: SCOTUS considers limits on securities class actions in state courts [Washington Legal Foundation]
- GAO: 2013 financial-agency guidance on leveraged lending was in effect a rulemaking, but wasn’t submitted to Congress as required. Time for review [Michelle Price, Davide Scigliuzzo, Reuters]
- Missed, from last March: shareholder class action lawyers suing Sprint sought to charge for 6,905 hours of work by (as it turned out) disbarred attorney [Joe Palazzolo and Sara Randazzo, WSJ; Doug Austin, eDiscovery Daily Blog]
- Joseph Stiglitz would like to outlaw Bitcoin [Jim Epstein, Reason]
- Bad idea watch: “Chicago Council Considers Banning Cashless Stores” [Charles Blain, Market Urbanism Report]
Banking and finance roundup
- Sources: Treasury intelligence division has unlawfully spied on and collected Americans’ private financial information [Jason Leopold and Jessica Garrison, BuzzFeed]
- “A majority of Americans oppose the idea of regulating CEO pay.” [Thaya Brook Knight, IBD]
- “Senate should vacate the harmful consumer banking arbitration rule” [Keith Noreika (acting U.S. Comptroller of the Currency), The Hill]
- “Derivative litigation mainly serves as a means of transferring wealth from investors to lawyers.” Is there a case for abolishing it? [Stephen Bainbridge]
- U.S. government files false affidavit, stages splashy raid, destroys business. Tough luck apparently [Ira Stoll on Second Circuit finding of qualified immunity for prosecutors in David Ganek case]
- “Look in the Mirror: Why the Number of Public Companies & IPOs are in Decline” [Patrick A. Reardon, CrowdFund Insider]
Banking and finance roundup
- “The Rise of Financial Regulation by Settlement” [Matthew C. Turk, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog]
- Before buying into the idea that fractional reserve banking has some sort of fraudulent roots, consider the common law concepts of detinue, bailment, and debt [George Selgin, Cato]
- Cato files brief urging Supreme Court to clarify constitutional status of SEC’s use of in-house administrative law judges [Thaya Brook Knight on Lucia v. SEC]
- Between FATCA and the Patriot Act, American extraterritorial banking rules keep wreaking havoc on other countries [Ernesto Londoño, New York Times on Uruguay legal marijuana businesses]
- “Congress Can Rescind the CFPB’s Gift to Trial Lawyers” [Ted Frank, WSJ]
- “Absent Reform, Little Relief in Sight from Chronic “Merger Tax” Class-Action Litigation” [Anthony Rickey, WLF]
Banking and finance roundup
- “Unintended Consequences of Military Lending Act Hurt Some Families” [R.J. Lehmann]
- Tenth Circuit: Fed must provide all depository institutiona access to the clearing system, whether they serve marijuana businesses or any other kind [George Selgin, Cato]
- “Moneylending has been taboo for most of human history. So how did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance?” [Alex Mayyasi, Aeon]
- Financial regulation: too many cooks in the compliance kitchen [Cato Daily Podcast with Thaya Brook Knight and Caleb Brown] “DOL Fiduciary Rule: It’s Not Always Fun to be Right” [Knight]
- “2016 was an unprecedented year in securities class actions filings.” [Baker Hostetler, JD Supra]
- Trusts and the offshore wealth trade: from Edmund Burke to the Cayman Islands [Graham McAleer, Law and Liberty]
Medical roundup
- “Apple Watch can detect an early sign of heart disease…. Apple has been communicating privately with the FDA for years about medical devices and so far the FDA has taken a light touch to Apple but these issues are coming to a head.” [Tyler Cowen]
- “[Investor] lawsuits targeting life sciences firms jumped 70 percent from 2014, according to a survey provided earlier this year by Dechert.” [Amanda Bronstad, New York Law Journal]
- Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad signs medical malpractice reforms into law [Brianne Pfannenstiel, Des Moines Register]
- Summing up what is known re: talc and ovarian cancer as background to jury’s $105 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson [BBC (in story’s second half), earlier here, here, and here]
- $5,300 for an MRI that would cost Medicaid $500? Personal attendants for crash victims, even the ones well enough to participate in mixed martial arts? All part of Michigan no-fault crash system [Detroit Free Press investigative series, see yesterday’s post]
- Dear D.C.: ditch the FDA deeming regs and let vaping save smokers’ lives [Jeff Stier/Henry Miller, NRO, Tony Abboud/The Hill (vaping trade association), Juliet Eilperin/Washington Post (FDA temporarily suspends enforcement)]
May 3 roundup
- Sixth Circuit ruling breaks new ground in disturbing ways: employer can be sued under Fair Housing Act if it withdraws job offer based on disapproval of accepted applicant’s public position on a housing controversy [Linkletter v. Western Southern Financial Group Inc.; Chiodi]
- A request from blogger Coyote: he’s looking to interview folks who run 10-40 employee firms [details]
- “Massachusetts is just one of six states that prohibit employers from donating to candidates while allowing unions to donate,” and the only one that prohibits employers from administering a PAC [Paul Craney and James Manley, Commonwealth Magazine]
- California voters sought to fix gerrymandering in races for state and federal office, but omitted to address the county level. Guess what’s happening now? [AP] No one is really fooled by Maryland legislature’s pledge to reform redistricting if five (5) nearby states all agree to enact exactly the same reforms [Nancy Soreng and Jennifer Bevan-Dangel, Washington Post; Rachel Baye/WYPR and related audio, legislation]
- D.C. should concentrate on deregulating hotel and apartment provision, rather than try to choke off AirBnB. [David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington, rounding up various views] “California will audit Airbnb hosts for racial discrimination” [ABA Journal, Guardian]
- Securities class action settlements continue steep rise [Harvard Corporate Governance Project]
Banking and finance roundup
- “The real-world impact of Dodd-Frank, stress tests and other regs” [M&T Bank slideshow, American Banker] “Six feet of new mortgage regulations help explain slower housing market” [Ira Stoll]
- Will Trump administration allow banking for cannabis-related businesses? [Kevin Funnell]
- “‘Sustainability Standards’ Open A Pandora’s Box Of Politically Correct Accounting” [Howard Husock and Jim Copland]
- An assumption of complete transparency would take away “the reason for financial intermediation in the first place” [Arnold Kling]
- Statutes of repose in securities actions are important in protecting interests on both sides [WLF on CalPERS v. ANZ Securities, Inc.]
- Encrypted messaging services allow Wall Streeters to bypass all sorts of regulatory scrutiny and speak freely, can’t have that [Bloomberg]
Jim Copland: Congress should override NY’s Martin Act
Especially given the role of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, federalism provides no good reason why successive holders of the office of New York attorney general, through the state’s ultra-broad Martin Act, should regulate national business practices in ways at odds with federal regulation and the wishes of the other 49 states:
national financial markets have been overseen since the Depression by the SEC under federal law. In 1996 Congress enacted the National Securities Improvement Act to exempt nationally traded securities from state registration and review requirements. Congress should go further and pre-empt state securities laws that seek to require disclosures exceeding federal standards or that have looser proof requirements on questions like intent.
[Jim Copland, WSJ ($) via Manhattan Institute; earlier on Martin Act]