| Securities and Commodities Exchange Litigation Reaches All-Time High in September 2020 |
| (10 Nov 2020)
The latest available data from the federal courts show that during September 2020, the government reported 262 new securities and commodities exchange civil filings based upon the recorded nature of the suit. This is the highest number of such filings for a single month on record going back to at least October 2007.
According to the case-by-case court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, this number is twice that of the previous month when the number of civil filings of this type totaled 125 and 25 percent higher compared with those a year earlier in September 2019.
This brings the total of securities and commodities exchange civil filings to a record total of 1,850 for fiscal year 2020. This total is even higher than the years following the great recession in 2008-2009. Suits in this category involve alleged violations of the Securities and Exchange Act, securities fraud, violations of commodities exchange regulations and other breaches of fiduciary duties. Three out of four suits (192) in September were brought by private parties rather than by federal agencies, while the remaining 70 were initiated by the federal government. Of the 70 suits filed by federal agencies during FY 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought 61, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed 9. SEC suits were brought for allegations of such matters including insider trading, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, market manipulations, as well as various violations of securities offerings. Suits of this type tended to be concentrated in just a few federal judicial districts. Over four out of every ten securities and commodities exchange suits brought in FY 2020 were filed in just two districts. The Southern District of New York (Manhattan) had the largest number of filings with 514. This was followed by Delaware with 275 suits. To read the full report covering historical trends and information on judicial districts, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civil/632/ Each month, TRAC offers a report focused on one area of civil litigation in the U.S. district courts. In addition, subscribers to the TRACFed data service can generate custom reports by district, office, nature of suit or federal jurisdiction with data updated through September 2020. To start, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/interpreter?tab=civil If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at: https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1 Follow us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/tracreports or like us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/tracreports TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Copyright 2020