Report: Securities Lawsuit Filings at “Near Record Levels”

A new report from Cornerstone Research found that securities class action lawsuits were filed at “near record levels” in the first six months of 2018, D&O Diary reports.

There were 204 securities class action lawsuits in the first half of the year, which projects to a year-end total of 408 filings. This would be a 101 percent increase over the annual average of filings between 1997 and 2017. Of the 204 lawsuits, 111 were traditional securities suits and 93 were merger objection lawsuits. The number of traditional filings increased 28 percent over the second half of last year.

The report also found that there have been 750 federal securities class action filings since mid-2016. This is the highest number of filings in a two-year period since the passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act in 1995.