Mr. Markham has extensive experience litigating securities fraud in federal and state court under the elaborate federal statutes and the California blue-skies law. He has successfully litigated substantial cases under Section 10 (b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the related regulation known as Rule 10b-5. To perform this work, he has closely reviewed the legal doctrines that govern these kinds of claims, including scienter, transaction causation, loss causation, and the other necessary elements of a securities claim made under Rule 10b-5. He has also litigated cases that arise under the anti-fraud provisions of the California Corporations Code.
Securities laws are different from the common law doctrine of fraud, and the unwary often discover this point after it is too late to change course. To plead and prevail in a difficult securities case, it is necessary that the litigant successfully anticipate the applicable pleading standards, the requirement of both transaction and loss causation, and the necessity of proving a clear nexus between the alleged misrepresentation, the victim’s ensuing decision to purchase or sell a “security,” and the losses that the victim claims have arisen from this decision and are reasonably linked to the actionable misrepresentation.
Mr. Markham once represented fifteen plaintiffs in a complicated securities case that arose under the California Corporations Act. In that case, he obtained judgments for fraud whose total amount was $968,928.00, plus post-judgment interest. Those judgments were presumably non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. See 11 U.S.C. § 523(a). The plaintiffs thus obtained a full recovery of funds that the defendants had obtained from them by their fraudulent promotion and sale of securities in violation of the California Corporations Code and various common-law doctrines. These judgments constituted an unqualified victory for the firm’s clients in a very complex case of highly sophisticated securities fraud. The principal challenge in this matter was to investigate, uncover, and explain Defendants’ complicated scheme to defraud many victims over a period of several years. Case Name: Ngo et al. v. Nguyen et al. (LA Cty. Sup. Ct., Case No. BC418361).