Many state securities laws, known as blue sky laws, are patterned after Section 12(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933.  The interpretation of these state blue sky laws, however, may diverge significantly from the interpretation of analogous federal securities statutes.  The recent Washington Court of Appeals opinion in FutureSelect Portfolio Management, Inc. et al. v. Tremont Group Holdings, Inc. et al., No. 68130-3-1 (Wn. Ct. App. Aug. 12, 2013), highlights one such divergence in which the scope of potential primary liability for secondary actors under the Washington State Securities Act extends beyond the scope of the federal law on which it was based.

In FutureSelect, a group of Washington state investors (“FutureSelect”) lost millions of dollars after purchasing interests in the Rye Funds, a “feeder fund” that invested in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.  The investors sued Tremont Group Holdings, Inc., the general partner in the Rye Funds and its affiliates, as well as the audit firm Ernst & Young LLP.  The plaintiffs’ claims against EY were based primarily on the allegation that EY misrepresented that it had conducted its audit of the Rye Funds’ financial statements in conformity with generally accepted auditing standards when issuing its unqualified audit opinion on these financial statements.  The trial court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against EY for failure to state a claim, but the Washington State Court of Appeals reversed that decision on appeal. READ MORE →