Can Securities Fraud Defendants Rebut Price Impact To Avoid Class Certification?

Keywords: Amgen v. Conn. Retirement Plans, Basic Inc. v. Levinson, Erica P. John Fund Inc. v. Halliburton Co., Fifth Circuit, fraud on the market, reliance, Supreme Court

In Section 10(b) securities-fraud cases based on affirmative misrepresentations, a class action cannot be certified unless investor reliance is presumed under the fraud-on-the-market theory of Basic, Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224 (1988). In Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 131 S. Ct. 2179 (2011), the Supreme Court ruled that a plaintiff does not need to establish loss causation at the class-certification stage in order to invoke the fraud-on-the-market presumption. On remand from that ruling, Halliburton argued that it should be permitted to rebut that presumption and defeat the request for class certification with evidence that the alleged misrepresentations had no impact on Halliburton's stock price. Based largely on the Supreme Court's intervening decision in Amgen Inc. v.