Securities Litigation, Investigations and Enforcement

Safe Harbor

It’s Not Easy Being Green: LeapFrog Execs Dodge Class-Action Over Sales Projections

Lily Becker and Danielle Van WertPosted on August 9, 2016

On August 2, 2016, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen dismissed a shareholder lawsuit brought against children’s educational toymaker LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. (“LeapFrog”) for failure to adequately plead statements were false or misleading, or made with requisite intent. Plaintiffs’ suit, which was consolidated in 2015, alleged that LeapFrog and its executives hid demand and inventory problems from investors. The judge disagreed, finding that the investors had been sufficiently warned of problems with LeapFrog’s product lines and that the allegedly misleading statements were forward-looking and cautionary, and therefore fell within the PSLRA’s safe harbor. Defendants’ public statements about many of the allegedly misleading topics helped drive home that Plaintiffs’ theory amounted to classic “fraud by hindsight.”

Storm Warning for Safe Harbor

M. Todd ScottPosted on March 15, 2016

On February 29, 2016, the Supreme Court denied certification in Harman International Industries Inc. et al. v. Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System et al., thereby leaving unanswered a number of questions related to the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA). The petitioners, defendant Harman International Industries Inc. (“Harman” or “the Company”) and related individual defendants, argued that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals erred when it reversed the district court’s decision granting Harman’s motion to dismiss. In declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court failed to resolve a circuit split concerning the relevance of state of mind to the efficacy of cautionary language.