In We Have a Consensus on Fraud on the Market – And It's Wrong, James Spindler has attempted to defend securities fraud class actions (SFCAs) and the fraud-on-the-market (FOTM) doctrine by purporting to refute two arguments that have been cited by numerous scholars: (1) the circularity...

According to the law and economics approach, pure economic loss is a private loss that is not socially relevant but simply implies a redistribution of wealth. Consequently, wrongful behavior that induces reallocation of costs and benefits with no consequences on social welfare is not considered...

This study examines whether directors' and officers' (D&O) insurers and lenders effectively monitor securities litigation and respond through pricing before case outcomes are known. By “monitoring,” we refer to tracking case progress and obtaining information from the insured (defendant)...

This paper documents that changes in litigation risk affect corporate voluntary disclosure practices. We make causal inferences by exploiting three legal events that generate exogenous variations in firms' litigation risk. Using a matching-based, fixed-effect difference-indifferences design, we...

We examine two distinct forms of information bundling that can occur when a firm releases a restatement: “positive bundling,” the release of good news with the restatement, and “negative bundling,” the release of additional bad news. We use a triple differences testing approach to...

And hence, it is precisely such active traders that may be shown not to have relied on the integrity of the market price or on the allegedly false statement but nevertheless remained in the class through settlement (because of the presumption at the certification stage) that might collect the...

Using a large set of restatement announcements and regulatory filings by U.S.-listed firms between 2003 and 2009, we find evidence that managers aim to reduce litigation risk by (1) bundling negative information, such as earnings restatements, with other public announcements, and (2) leaking...

In broad samples, insider selling does not increase the likelihood of a class-action lawsuit filing. In this paper, we examine the reasons behind this finding. We find that insider sales significantly increase lawsuit probability only when we jointly consider insider identity, insider sale...

This study examines the effect of litigation risk and litigation costs on firms' credit ratings and debt financing. The results show that litigation affects a firm's creditworthiness and debt costs in two stages. Before a lawsuit filing, firms at higher risk of litigation have lower credit...