Securities Fraud

Both Mr. Markham and Mr. Bishop have extensive experience litigating securities fraud in federal and state court under the elaborate federal statutes and the California blue-skies law. Both have successfully litigated substantial cases under Section 10 (b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the related regulation known as Rule 10b-5. Along the way, Mr. Markham and Mr. Bishop have had occasion to analyze, interpret and argue the complicated case law doctrines that concern the issues of sufficiently pleading wrongful scienter, transaction causation, loss causation, and the other necessary elements of a securities claim made under Rule 10b-5. Both have 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.

Both Mr. Markham and Mr. Bishop are highly skilled practitioners in securities litigation, and we can bring claims and make defenses against them on the basis of our superior understanding of how securities cases are litigated in federal and state court.

Recently, Mr. Markham represented fifteen plaintiffs in a complicated securities case that he brought under the California Corporations Act in state court. In this case, he obtained judgments on their behalf against seven defendants for a total amount of $968,928.00. By these judgments, the plaintiffs obtained the right to full recovery of all of the money 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).