New Enron Cert. Petition
on Apr 6, 2007 at 12:10 pm
UPDATE April 12: The case has now been docketed as 06-1341.
At the WSJ.com Law Blog, Peter Lattman reports here that Bill Lerach filed this cert. petition yesterday, asking the Supreme Court to review his Enron case concurrently with Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta. Last month, the Fifth Circuit ruled that shareholders could not proceed with their class action lawsuit against investment banks and securities firms for their alleged role in the Enron accounting fraud. This blog discussed the Fifth Circuit ruling in this post, before the Supreme Court granted review in the Stoneridge case.
The question presented in the Enron case (Regents of the University of California v. Merrill Lynch, et al.) is:
Does liability exist under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b-5, where an actor knowingly uses or employs deceptive devices and contrivances, as part of a scheme to defraud investors in another public company, but itself makes no affirmative misrepresentations to the market?
The case has not yet been assigned a docket number.
The Stoneridge case (docket 06-43) was granted review on March 26, and thus will not be heard until the Court’s next Term, starting Oct. 1.
