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Supreme Court to Hear Texas-Based Halliburton’s Class Action Securities Fraud Case Again
The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear Halliburton v. Erica John Fund. In it, the Texas-based multinational corporation is appealing a class action securities lawsuit that tests the fraud-on-the market theory. That doctrine became part of securities law in 1988 after the highest court’s ruling in Basic v. Levinson.
The fraud-on-the-market theory is premised upon the efficient markets hypothesis, which is that the price of a stock is a reflection of all public data. This makes it possible for plaintiff attorneys to set up a class action for all the buyers of a stock without having to first prove in court that these purchasers depended upon untrue information from the company and that this caused their losses.
Instead, the doctrine assumes that a company’s stock price can reflect corporate assertions even if they are misleading. As a result lawyers are able to submit securities fraud classes while blaming corporate executives for certain changes in the market value of a company’s stock.