BVLaw Case Update

Every month, BVLaw analyzes and digests federal and state court decisions (including opinions from the United States Tax Court) that focus on valuation and damages issues and feature expert testimony. A BVLaw subscription is an efficient way for financial experts to keep up with developments in their areas of expertise and with the various courts’ takes on valuation methodology, Daubert and the art of presentation, and policy concerns.

For an expert, it is critical to understand the position of the court in which the expert will testify. Two recent securities fraud actions in which the plaintiffs sought class certification serve as a case in point. Both matters were litigated in federal court in California. One case was in the Northern District, the other in the Southern District. The issues were pretty much identical: Would the plaintiffs be able to meet the predominance requirement of Rule 23(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure? Specifically, did the plaintiff experts’ event studies support the application of the Basic presumption of reliance, such that the plaintiffs could show classwide issues predominated over individualized issues of reliance? The courts' decisions differed in large part because the courts interpreted prior case law on the price impact analysis differently.

Find out more about these two cases and other noteworthy case discussion recently added to BVLaw here.