Assessing Federal Securities Class Action Stats in ’25 So Far
Law360, 2025
Monitoring litigation trends in federal securities class actions – particularly trends in the number of filings, size of settlements, and characteristics of settled cases – can inform practitioners’ understanding of the market. In an article published in Law360, Analysis Group Managing Principal Mark Howrey and Vice President Emma Dong analyze securities class action outcomes for the first half of 2025 – including case filings and proprietary data on thousands of settlements – to provide current benchmarks for practitioners. The article reports current statistics and trends in the number of filings and settlements, industry distribution, and settlement amounts.
The authors found that the number of federal securities class action filings with Rule 10b-5 or Securities Act Section 11 claims in the first half of 2025 was on par with the pace of such filings over the past decade. Similarly, the disproportionate concentration of securities class action in the drug and software industries was consistent with recent and long-term trends and, as the authors reasoned, likely attributable to industry-specific investment risks (e.g., stock price declines following disappointing results in emerging technology product launches or clinical trials). The analysis revealed a downward trend in settlement amounts, though the authors caution that “closely tracking both future settlements and the characteristics of settled cases will be critical to determining whether this decline reflects a long-term trend or a temporary fluctuation.”