
In our paper, Lying and Getting Caught: An Empirical Study of the Effect of Securities Class Action Settlements on Targeted Firms [Lynn Bai, James D. Cox & Randall S. Thomas, Lying and Getting Caught: An Empirical Study of the Effect of Securities Class Action Settlements on Targeted Firms, 158 U. Pa. L. Rev. (forthcoming July 2010)], we examine the effect of securities class action settlements on targeted firms. Private suits have long been championed as a necessary mechanism not only to compensate investors for harms they suffer from financial frauds but also to enhance the deterrence of wrongdoing. But many critics have claimed that there a hidden dark side to the successful prosecution of a securities class action. In this paper, we shed light on these issues by examining whether the revelation of earlier misstatements, the initiation of private suit, and the payment of a substantial settlement, weaken the defendant firm so that the firm is permanently worse off as a consequence of the settlement.
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