Second Take on Amgen: Defense Arguments Largely Intact, Even in Overruled Circuits

In our post in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans, we concluded that rather than being a new threat to the defense of securities class actions, Amgen basically endorsed the status quo: In holding that plaintiffs do not need to establish that allegedly false statements were material to the market before they can gain class certification, the Amgen Court reinforced the rule that is already followed in most courts. At the same time, we promised to dive deeper in a future post, to discuss the effect of Amgen in those circuits that had previously entertained disputes over materiality in determining whether to certify a class.

This was a weighty task. In the absence of clear guidance from the Supreme Court, the law on class certification has developed in myriad, complex, and contradictory ways across the circuit courts. The precise legal effect of the Amgen decision will therefore vary from one circuit to the next, as the law in many circuits has not been fully developed, and other circuits have developed distinct doctrines in their effort to find a principled way to implement the fraud-on-the-market presumption from Basic v. Levinson. Yet a survey of these circuit court decisions, and the way that they have been interpreted in the district courts, merely reinforces our conclusion that Amgen will have relatively little negative practical impact on defendants – in any jurisdiction. Far from being a “crushing blow” to the defense bar that will “make it easier” for plaintiffs to maintain securities class actions, as many commentators have claimed, the Amgen decision seems to close very few strategic doors to the defense, no matter where a case is litigated.

This is true for three primary reasons. First, most of the arguments that defendants have made to dispute materiality at class certification are the same as arguments that can be made – and often are, with greater success – on a motion to dismiss, because they challenge fundamental flaws in the complaint that point to plaintiffs’ inability to make sufficient allegations of falsity and loss causation. Second, the only circuit that required plaintiffs to “prove” materiality before a class would be certified was the Fifth Circuit, whose holdings in this regard had already been largely neutralized by the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton. Finally, in those circuits that had allowed defendants a chance to rebut materiality and thus defeat class certification – in particular, the Second and Third Circuits – the bar was already set so high that this opportunity seemed to be largely illusory.

As an initial matter, it is necessary to identify those circuits that have holdings which are incompatible with the Amgen opinion. While many circuit courts have yet to grapple explicitly with the issue, the Amgen ruling is in line with the approach articulated by the Ninth Circuit (see that court’s decision in Amgen, 660 F.3d 1170 (9th Cir. 2011)) and the Seventh Circuit (seeSchleicher v. Wendt, 618 F.3d 679, 687 (2010)), and the emerging doctrine of the First Circuit (see, e.g., In re Boston Scientific Corp., 604 F. Supp.2d 275 (D. Mass. 2009)) and the Fourth Circuit (see, e.g., In re Red Hat, Inc., Sec. Litig., 261 F.R.D. 83 (E.D. N.C. 2009)). On the other hand, as discussed below, Amgen raises questions when examined in connection with the extreme approach formerly taken by the Fifth Circuit (seeOscar Private Equity Investments v. Allegiance Telecom, Inc., 487 F.3d 261, 267 (5th Cir. 2007)) as well as the more moderate doctrines articulated by the Second Circuit (seeIn re Salomon Analyst Metromedia Litigation, 544 F.3d 474, 484 (2d Cir. 2008)) and the Third Circuit (seeIn re DVI, Inc. Securities Litigation, 639 F. 3d 623, 631 (3d Cir. 2011)).

Until 2011, the Fifth Circuit took the most aggressive approach toward class certification, requiring not only proof that an alleged misstatement “actually moved” the market in order to invoke the fraud-on-the-market presumption, but also requiring plaintiffs to prove loss causation. This doctrine was summarily rejected by a unanimous Supreme Court in Halliburton, which found that the requirement that plaintiffs prove loss causation to gain class certification was “not justified by Basic or its logic.” (See 131 S.Ct. 2179 (2011)). It is not clear what, if anything, remained of the Fifth Circuit’s doctrine after Halliburton. Arguably, a requirement survived that plaintiffs make a showing prior to class certification that either the misrepresentation or the corrective disclosure had an impact on stock price, but that is unclear, because the Fifth Circuit’s justification for this requirement was closely tied to its demand that plaintiffs prove loss causation – and neither the Fifth Circuit nor its district courts have made rulings on this basis since the Halliburton decision.

By contrast, the rule in the Second Circuit survived Halliburton, but was overturned by Amgen. According to the Second Circuit, plaintiffs were required to make “some showing” of materiality in order to trigger the fraud-on-the-market presumption, either through showing an impact of information on the stock price, or simply by arguing that there was a “substantial likelihood” that the misrepresented or omitted information “would have been viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the total mix of information made available.” (SeeSalomon, 544 F.3d at 485). At that point, the burden shifted to the defendants to rebut the presumption of reliance, with evidence that “severs the link” between the alleged misrepresentation and the price of the stock.

Similarly, the Third Circuit ruled in 2011 that district courts may consider evidence to rebut the presumption of reliance, and thereby defeat class certification. The court reasoned that evidence that a corrective disclosure did not affect the market price could defeat class certification in one of two ways. If the statement was material, it could show that the market was not efficient in absorbing information (an acknowledged prerequisite to the Basic presumption). On the other hand, if the market was efficient but the corrective disclosure did not affect the stock price, the Third Circuit held that it could demonstrate that the challenged statement was immaterial as a matter of law. (SeeIn re DVI, 639 F. 3d at 638).

Before Halliburton, the Fifth Circuit’s standard undoubtedly made it difficult for plaintiffs to gain class certification – not only because loss causation was explicitly incorporated into the class certification inquiry, but because plaintiffs bore the burden of proving loss causation before certification was granted. As noted above, much or all of this hurdle was removed by Halliburton, leaving little or nothing for Amgen to resolve. By contrast, the standard used by in the Second and Third Circuits placed the burden on the defendants to rebut the presumption of materiality. Although this gave defendants the opportunity to present evidence about materiality, including expert testimony, the courts implementing this standard generally found that the defendants had failed to meet their burden, and granted class certification despite this evidence. In ruling that defendants could not present evidence to rebut materiality until summary judgment or trial, the Amgen Court eliminated the possibility that this materiality evidence will be considered at the class certification stage – but this ruling will likely have little practical effect in the Second and Third Circuits, where that opportunity did not seem to give defendants any real advantage.

What is most striking in the pre-Amgen cases that considered materiality on class certification was that nearly all of the arguments that defendants advanced could have been advanced – and often, already had been advanced – at the motion-to-dismiss stage. If the courts had already accepted these arguments on a motion to dismiss, in most cases the issue would not have reached class certification. On the other hand, if the courts had already rejected these contentions once at the motion-to-dismiss stage, they did not seem to be any more willing to accept them when they were reframed on class certification. For example, defendants in these cases sought to defeat materiality by contending that the defendant company had disclosed the truth to the market, rendering the allegedly false statement material. This argument is easily recast, especially in the case of alleged omissions, to contend that plaintiffs failed to adequately allege of the existence of a false or misleading statement in the first place. Similarly, at class certification, defendants advanced arguments that the plaintiffs had failed to connect the alleged misstatements with any corrective disclosure that revealed the truth to the market, or that they were unable to point to a drop in the stock price following the corrective disclosure – failures that the courts already routinely recognize as fatal to adequate pleading of loss causation, which can be adjudicated on motions to dismiss.

Indeed, the only arguments advanced by defendants in these cases that were unique to the class certification procedure were those that used expert testimony to assert that a price drop was not due to an alleged corrective disclosure, but rather to other negative information that was released simultaneously, or general adverse market conditions. These contentions involved difficult factual distinctions that the district courts were reluctant to make, particularly in the Second Circuit, where the defendants carried the burden of disproving materiality.

In sum, the Amgen decision seems to foreclose very little in terms of defense strategy. It may eliminate the use of expert testimony regarding materiality on class certification motions – although such testimony can still be relevant regarding the “efficiency” of the market for the company’s stock. And it will likely foreclose defendants’ efforts to contend, based largely on expert testimony, that a stock price drop was not the result of a corrective disclosure, but of other factors present at the same time – although defendants should still be able to offer evidence and expert testimony to define the proper contours of the class period based on market events and the timing of corrective disclosures. But most of the defense arguments that have been used to oppose class certification – whether they are phrased in terms of materiality, falsity, or loss causation – will continue to be available, and effective, through motions to dismiss.

More significantly, the Amgen decision suggests room for doubt on the larger question of reliance – the most fundamental and problematic issue for plaintiffs in obtaining certification of a securities class action. The decision all but invites the defense bar to use its creativity to find the right argument to advance in the right case, to engage district and circuit courts that are already struggling with the fraud-on-the-market doctrine, and in turn, to tempt the Supreme Court into reconsidering the wisdom of Basic (which it has shown a clear inclination to do). While Amgen may have closed the door on a few defense strategies – which were rarely successful, in any case, in defeating class certification – it has simultaneously opened the window for defense counsel to find new ways to illustrate the shortcomings of the Basic presumption, and thus to mount a much more serious challenge to ability of the plaintiffs’ bar to bring securities class actions.