The following report is from the Wall Street Journal:
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a plea from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to raise the bar for shareholder lawsuits alleging fraud, but returned a class-action lawsuit against the company to a lower court for further proceedings.
At issue was an investor lawsuit filed in 2011 that alleged Goldman artificially inflated its share price before, during and after the 2007-09 financial crisis. The suit said the firm falsely claimed that it was complying with ethical rules when in fact it was riddled with undisclosed conflicts of interest in its packaging and selling of mortgage-backed securities.
“Our clients’ interests always come first,” was one of the generic statements plaintiffs, including the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, alleged was fraudulent with the effect of artificially maintaining Goldman’s stock price.
Our reputation is one of our most important assets. We have extensive procedures and controls that are designed to identify and address conflicts of interest.
Goldman Sachs said in a statement
The hit Goldman’s shares eventually took, the lawsuit alleged, came when the public learned the firm structured enormous transactions that benefited itself and certain clients at the expense of other clients.
Earlier in the case, the justices had been expected to consider whether such general statements asserting corporate integrity could ever be actionable. But when arguments were presented to the court in March, both parties agreed that general misrepresentations could give rise to a fraud claim, with legal maneuvering limited to the margins of procedural rules for shareholder class-actions.
The parties now agree, as do we, that the generic nature of a misrepresentation often is important evidence of price impact that courts should consider at class certification.
-Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch joined portions of the court’s opinion and filed several separate opinions concurring or dissenting from various points.
In a win for Goldman, the court directed a federal appeals court in New York to reconsider whether it had “properly considered the generic nature of Goldman’s alleged misrepresentations,” based on the trial court’s determination of the price impact of those statements.
But the court rejected Goldman’s argument that early in litigation the plaintiffs are obligated to persuade the court that the alleged misstatements affected the price. Instead, a defendant such as Goldman “bears the burden of persuasion to prove a lack of price impact,” Justice Barrett wrote.
Still, she added, even this decision was “unlikely to make much difference on the ground.” Shareholder class-actions like the Goldman case typically see battles between each party’s experts on price impact.
The alleged conflicts stemmed from transactions involving subprime mortgages, including Goldman’s Abacus deal, in which the firm allegedly allowed the hedge fund Paulson & Co. to help select the mortgages that Goldman bundled and sold to investors while knowing that Paulson was betting that the investments would fail. Paulson allegedly made roughly $1 billion at investors’ expense and Goldman agreed to pay $550 million in a 2010 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in which it acknowledged that it should have disclosed Paulson’s role.
A law firm representing the plaintiffs, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, praised the decision.
Although two trips to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and one to the Supreme Court may have delayed justice, they will not deter us from vindicating the rights of the lead plaintiffs and the other investors who trusted Goldman and suffered significant harm for doing so.
Read the statement
We are pleased the Supreme Court has vacated the grant of class certification and we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves as the case returns to the lower courts.
Spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs
The shareholder class action had made multiple trips between two lower courts that considered whether the lawsuit could be certified as a class action and allowed to proceed. After Goldman lost a ruling last year at the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. v. Arkansas Teacher Retirement System.
In a separate decision Monday, the court said Congress granted too much autonomy to administrative patent judges who review challenges to previously granted patents, but corrected the error by allowing the Patent and Trademark Office director to overrule their decisions.
Under a 2011 law, three-member panels of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board review such patent contests. After the board invalidated a surgical-device patent held by Arthrex Inc., the company claimed the system for appointing patent judges was unconstitutional because they were named by the secretary of commerce rather than nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
A specialized federal appeals court that oversees patent law agreed that because the patent judges couldn’t be removed at will or their decisions overturned within the executive branch, they were “principal” officers requiring presidential nomination and Senate confirmation. That court, known as the Federal Circuit, eliminated the judges’ tenure protections and made them removable by the secretary of commerce.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the proper solution was to make the patent judges’ decisions reviewable by the director of the Patent Office, who is a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee.
Since the founding, principal officers have directed the decisions of inferior officers on matters of law as well as policy. When it comes to the patent system in particular, adjudication has followed the traditional rule that a principal officer, if not the President himself, makes the final decision on how to exercise executive power. Recall that officers in President Washington’s Cabinet formed the first Patent Board in 1790.
John Roberts wrote
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett joined all of the chief justice’s opinion in the case, U.S. v. Arthrex Inc. Other justices joined part of the Roberts opinion and filed concurring and dissenting opinions laying out their views of the constitutional structure for the selection and independence of federal officers.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.
Ecclesiastes 10:19
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10
The Supreme Court and the rest of the useless American government has been in the backpockets of the banskter gangsters for a very long time. They don’t make the laws: the banksters do.
And, lookie-lookie: Trump’s appointees once again coming in “clutch!” “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare. Trump’s Appointees Vote To Not Challenge The Legislation
Supreme Court Allows Media Monopolies To Own Even More
The ultra wealthy and mega rich will get their way until the Lord Jesus Christ pours out his wrath on this world, and then these rich vermin will have their day, releasing no amount of wealth will save them.
[15] And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; [16] And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: [17] For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?Revelation 6:15-17
Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death.
Proverbs 11:4
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Of course they won’t. Catholic all the way….and Brett Kavanaugh was a clerk under Barr when he covered up all the abuses of power in the Randy Weaver case. Evil, elitist corporatists to the core who will do their masters’ bidding. (Of course, if they didn’t they might get Scallia’d….so who’s surprised?) Obamacare and the money men get a pass, the lawyers get richer & will go into their not-so-smart cities with the judges & corporatists thinking they’ve won a round of ‘survivor’ rather than an even worse judgment than those they deceive. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— All those mutual funds & 401k’s that used pension funds to transfer wealth & support entities & projects that few in those days would have been comfortable with while the ‘conservatives’ and ‘Christian right’ talked all big, acted like they were actually going to do something & stand for the people, and stuffed their pockets & that of their family members, their alma maters & cronies. Nothing transferred wealth more effectively than that & the inflated price of drawn out union, insurance, and government crony ‘healthcare’ for the hardly alive & overly drugged….and the ‘new’ estate tax laws after they’d set folks up nicely. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– When they shall say ‘peace and safety’…. and ‘vomit’….but I can’t think their smart cities will last long, and somehow they’ll all be on horseback when they blame & come against Babylon & the Jews for it all. Those big bad Vatican court Rotheschild’s. Though that final Pope won’t be up for sharing the wealth, glory or worship with ANY of them. He’ll be HUGE, I tell ya…