DRI Amicus Brief Argues That Second Circuit’s Expansive View Of "Class Standing" In Securities Cases Should Be Rejected

Keywords: Second Circuit, securities, Supreme Court

A few months ago, I posted about a Second Circuit decision that threatens to open the floodgates to securities class actions, NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund v. Goldman Sachs & Co., 693 F.3d 145 (2d Cir. 2012).In that decision, the Second Circuit ruled that even though a plaintiff in an individual action may assert securities claims only as to securities that it purchased, a plaintiff may bring a class action involving securities that it did not purchase.According to the Second Circuit, a plaintiff has "class standing" to bring such claims if it purchased at least one of the securities at issue in the lawsuit and all of the class claims raise a sufficiently similar set of concerns.In October, Goldman Sachs filed a petition for certiorari seeking review of the Second Circuit's decision.And last week, my colleagues and I submitted an amicus brief (pdf) on behalf of DRI-The Voice of the Defense Bar in support of