We are confident that any survey of practicing lawyers would show “privilege logs,” “legal holds,” and “subject-matter waiver” very low on any list of “things I enjoy most about the practice of law.” Nonetheless, those are exactly the topics that Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was forced to rule on in Pearlstein v. BlackBerry Ltd., 2019 WL 1259382 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 19, 2019).

In this putative class action, the plaintiffs alleged that defendant BlackBerry committed securities fraud when it purportedly made material misrepresentations and omissions regarding the sales performance of its Z10 smartphone. The plaintiffs alleged these supposed misstatements artificially inflated the company’s stock price.