Last year Apollo Group, convinced it had a watertight case, became one of only a handful of companies in the past decade to go to trial rather than settle a securities class action.
On Jan. 16, as The American Lawyer reported in its April issue, Apollo lost that bet big-time. Represented by lead trial counsel Wayne Smith at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the company was slapped with a $277 million compensatory damages verdict after jurors ruled that Apollo had misled investors. The decision was the largest investors’ win since the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act was enacted in 1995.
