Auditor Can’t Escape ANR Action

KPMG Bermuda has lost it’s bid to be dismissed from the ANR securities class action.Senior Judge Ellen Bree Burns (D. Conn.) (pictured left) evaluated the audit firm’s alleged knowledge and intent, holding that “repeated restatements can… raise an inference of scienter.”

The other prong of her opinion addressed materiality, with Judge Burns finding that KPMG Bermuda’s audit opinions, which said that “ANR’s financial statements fairly represented its financial position and were created in accordance with GAAP,” “were relied upon by investors making their investment decisions,” and “thus, plaintiffs have adequately pled the existence of material misrepresentations made by KPMG Bermuda.”

You can read Schnall v. ANR, issued August 30, 2006 at 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61898

Nugget: “While allegations of GAAP and GAAS violations alone are generally not sufficient to create a strong inference, of reckless behavior, where plaintiffs have alleged facts showing that there were numerous red flags that KPMG must have been aware of, if it were conducting any kind of audit, reckless conduct can be, and has been, inferred.”

Shotgun City

The Eleventh Circuit has ruled in the First Horizon securities class action. But before we get to that, it helps to know that before the case got to the Court of Appeals, the District Judge (after throwing out Plaintiffs’ amended complaint), told Plaintiffs that if they wanted to file a motion to amend, they’d have to pay all of Defendants costs and fees associated with the motion to dismiss. Hmmmm, let’s see. Uh, nope, said the Plaintiffs, instead appealing the ruling.

Well, that appeal has now led to an opinion, authored by Circuit Judge Stanley F. Birch (pictured). In it, the Panel says that “the defendant is a no good defrauder.” Strong language, huh? Actually, the Panel uses that language in a rhetorical sense, ruling for Defendants by accepting the sound-in-fraud argument “when the facts underlying the misrepresentation at stake in the claim are said to be part of a fraud claim, as alleged elsewhere in the complaint.” However, before some of you start to get carried away, the Panel did make clear that they do not intend to “elevate the pleading standard when the claim is not alleged to have been part of another fraud-based claim.” So kind of where we were – don’t allege fraud in your ’33 Act claims.

And here’s another thing not to do if you’re a Plaintiff. The Panel held that “the complaint at issue in this case is a proverbial shotgun pleading,” which to them is a complaint that “incorporate[s] every antecedent allegation by reference into each subsequent claim for relief or affirmative defense.” In other words, how and exactly what you incorporate from the body of the complaint into the Counts is important – especially in the Eleventh Circuit. So if you’re drafting an amended complaint right now, do yourself a favor and read this opinion carefully. Otherwise, you could be responsible for a Nugget article you won’t like.

Oh, and as for the cost and fee thing, the Panel said it chooses to “strike a different path,” concluding that they “disagree that dismissal was the appropriate course of action for the district court to take at this juncture in the litigation,” because things seem “more clearly in Rule 12(e)’s remedy of ordering repleading for a more definite statement of the claim, rather than in Rule 12(b)(6)’s remedy of dismissal for failure to state a claim.” So, “given the district court’s proper conclusions that the complaint was a shotgun pleading and that the plaintiffs’ failed to connect their causes of action to the facts alleged, the proper remedy was to order repleading sua sponte.”

You can read Wagner v. First Horizon, issued yesterday, here.

Nugget: “Shotgun pleadings wreck havoc on the judicial system. Such pleadings divert already stretched judicial resources into disputes that are not structurally prepared to efficiently use those resources.”

How Do You Like Us in Bold?

Having been dismissed once back in February 2006, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel (N.D. Cal.) (pictured) gave Plaintiffs in the iPass securities class action another chance. So what did they do? Well, I’m not sure what might have gone wrong, but Judge Patel says “Plaintiffs have merely changed the typeface in their amended complaint.” Is this really for real? Really? Wow, I couldn’t see the true falsity before, but now that I read it in 14 point Bolded Palatino Linotype, it’s so clear. I’m going to deny the individual defendants’ motions to dismiss in full, and suggest to counsel that if they’d gone all out with the BlackAdder ITC fully-loaded 16 point, I’d have even kept those nasty auditors in this thing. But guess what? It didn’t work. I mean it really didn’t work.

In all fairness, it seems there were other changes to the second amended complaint, but they did about as much good as the ill-fated font switch (or whatever the actual typeface change actually was), with Judge Patel topping it all off by noting that Plaintiffs “failure to meet their pleading burden despite the Court’s Order having laid out a clear blueprint for doing so suggests that amendment would be futile.”

Result? Dismissed with prejudice.

You can read In re iPass, issued September 6, 2006, at 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63654.

Nugget: “If anything, sale to repay a loan is more probative of good faith than bad, as it provides a reason for the sale wholly independent of future business difficulties.”

Posner Prose

Classic Judge Posner.Just classic.I never get tired of reading his opinions, and believe you me I get tired of many of them quick.So, listen to this from yesterday’s Seventh Circuit opinion in the AT&T/Georgeson class action.You see, as he puts it, “after you buy a car and drive away with your new possession, much can happen to affect the value of your purchase. If what happens is traceable to something that occurred before the sale was complete, such as a defective engine block, you may be able to undo the sale on the basis that that something happened ‘in connection with’ the sale. But if something happens after the transaction is complete to make it less worthwhile to you, such as the dealer’s replacing a tire that has worn out with one that is the wrong size, it is a separate wrong, not anything connected with the original sale unless the wrong is a breach of warranty.”

But “of course there is a literal sense in which anything that happens that would not have happened but for some prior event is connected to that event. In that sense the fraud of which the plaintiff complains is connected to the merger, without which there would not have been such a fraud against the plaintiff and her class. But in the same sense the fraud is connected to the Big Bang, without which there would never have been a MediaOne or even an AT&T.”

There’s more where that came from, so if you like Posner (Yeah!), or you really can’t wait to read another SLUSA case (until now, always a big Zzzzz), you can read the opinion or listen to the oral argument in Gavin v. AT&T & Georgeson, issued September 6, 2006, right here.

Nugget: “Georgeson’s lawyer told us that the defendants had not sought removal on the alternative ground of diversity because they were certain there was jurisdiction under SLUSA. That was a mistake, but he added that he doubted that the plaintiff’s complaint satisfied the requirement that the amount in controversy exceed $ 75,000. That was another mistake.”

Let the Money Do the Monitoring

Judge William J. Haynes, Jr. (M.D. Tenn.) (pictured here during his 2004 Senate confirmation hearing) says that “to be sure, the plaintiff with the larger numeric loss is not automatically the plaintiff with the ‘largest financial interest’.” But “as to the Peoria Fund‘s various arguments” in the American Service Group securities class action, he reminded everyone that “it must be remembered that ‘[t]he manifest intent of the (PSLRA) is determining the Plaintiff most capable of pursuing the action and representing the interests of the class,’” and that “this standard has been described as “let the money do the monitoring.”

So, “given MARTA‘s losses, its assets and the limited number of Plaintiffs seeking lead plaintiff status, the Court does not ascertain any practical need for an alternate method for determining the largest financial interest nor for the appointment of co-lead plaintiffs.”

You can read In re American Service Group, issued August 28, 2006 at 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61779.

Nugget: “If, later in this litigation, good cause is shown to revisit this issue, any plaintiff may move the Court for reconsideration of its appointment of the lead plaintiff.”

Two Little Birds, One Big Stone

Judge Lance M. Africk (E.D. La.) (George W., Class of ’02) combined his rulings on the motions to dismiss the US Unwired securities class action and the derivative case. You see, after tossing the derivative case on a standing issue, it all came down to safe harbor and loss causation, with Judge Africk first finding that “beyond the blanket assertion by plaintiff that defendants knew that these statements were false when they were made, the Court can find no other suggestions of this alleged fraud.”

As for Dura, chalk this one up for the defense, as Judge Africk held that the Amended Complaint’s “Truth Begins to Emerge,” section “failed to detail the statements made during the class period that would have revealed the truth about defendants’ alleged misrepresentations and shown these misrepresentations to be the proximate cause of plaintiff’s losses.”

So that’s it, right? Well, maybe not, as the dismissal was entered without prejudice. Remains to be seen if Plaintiffs will take another shot and amend.

You can read Romero v. US Unwired, issued August 11, 2006, at 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60589.

Nugget: “To establish the requisite causation, the truth regarding a defendant’s putative misrepresentations must come to light.”