|  | | 2011 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Subprime and Credit-Crisis Related Securities Cases: The Latest Status
Kevin LaCroix
The D & O Diary. January 10, 2011
_________________________________________________________________________
EXCERPT: The first subprime-related securities class action lawsuit was filed in February 2007, and so the subprime and credit crisis-related litigation wave will soon enter its fifth year. With the anniversary date just ahead, it seems like an appropriate time to step back for an updated interim status update. I have set out below a numerical overview of the case filings and case resolutions so far, followed by some observations about how the cases are developing. New Case Filings Though the depths of the financial crisis is now mercifully receding further into the past, credit crisis-related cases still continued to arrive during 2010, albeit in significantly diminished numbers. As I noted in my overview of the 2010 securities class action lawsuit filings, the credit crisis cases were a significant part of all filings during the years 2008 (when there were 102 credit crisis-related lawsuit filings) and 2009 (62). By contrast during 2010, there were only 23 new credit crisis-related securities lawsuits, representing about 13% percent of the total. Of these 23 new credit crisis cases, only nine of these cases were filed in the year’s second half, and only one was filed after August 2010. The subprime and credit crisis litigation wave, it seems, is winding down. One factor complicating efforts to continue to track the filings is that over time it has become increasingly difficult to maintain definitional clarity about what exactly constitutes a subprime or credit crisis-related case. For that reason, published reports of the number of subprime and credit crisis securities suits vary. But the various reports generally agree that there are about 230 securities class action lawsuits have been filed since the beginning of the subprime litigation wave. For statistical simplicity, I have used the number 230 for analytical purposes in this post. |
|
|
