Frederick, who argued at the Supreme Court for Merck investors claiming the company failed to disclose Vioxx issues, chuckled at first and then told us it’s been a recent development. “Last year, I was the preemption guy,” he said. “This year, I’m the securities guy, I guess.” In 2008 and 2009, former Litigator of the Week Frederick scored two huge wins for plaintiffs in preemption cases at the Supreme Court: Wyeth v. Levine and Altria Group v. Good.
The outcome was less clear in the Supreme Court’s March decision in Jones v. Harris, in which Frederick represented mutual fund shareholders, but his win for Merck shareholders–and future securities class action plaintiffs–couldn’t have been more resounding. The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, concluding that a securities class action against Merck should not have been dismissed on statute of limitations grounds. In an opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court found that the statute of limitations “begins to run once the plaintiff actually discovered or a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have ‘discover[ed] the facts constituting the violation’–whichever comes first.”
