The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a solid win to third-party defendants in securities litigation — including law firms, accountants and bankers — by shielding them from broad “scheme liability” for their tangential role in corporate fraud.
The victory came in the much-awaited case of Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta Inc. and Motorola Inc., in which investor groups that sued the cable operator Charter Communications for fraud also pursued the companies that sold cable boxes that figured in some of Charter’s fraudulent transactions.
