미국 증권집단소송의 최근 현황과 주요 사례 분석

Abstract

Since the Securities-Related Class Action Act(hereafter "the Act") was effected on January 1 2005, total nine securities class actions were filed. It means that the securities class action under the Act has not been utilized actively to claim for damages of numerous small investors as the purpose of the Act, considering that the illegal market manipulation activities have increased as the scope of securities market has been expanded during the past ten years. This paper presents suggestion to improve the current regulations related to the securities class action by studying the recent trends and important cases in securities class action litigation in the U.S. which was the legislative model of the Act. The recent trends in securities class action litigation in the U.S. are analyzed in detail by various criteria, such as annual number of class action filings, change of market value, cause of allegation, percentage of U.S. exchange-listed companies subject to filings and change in the number of companies listed on U.S. exchange, status of filings such as being dismissed, settled, or trial verdict, time to resolution, status of motions for class certification and time from first complaint filing to class certification decision, number and size of settlement. This paper also deeply analyzes facts, issues, litigation process, outcomes and suggestions of important securities class cases - Enron case, WorldCom case, Basic Inc. v. Levinson, Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd. - which provide significant standards to apply the regulations for the securities class action.