A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly an American phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 is a United States federal law that mandates certain practices in financial record keeping and reporting for corporations. The act,, also known as the "Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act" and "Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act" and more commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, SOX or Sarbox, contains eleven sections that place requirements on all U.S. public company boards of directors and management and public accounting firms. A number of provisions of the Act also apply to privately held companies, such as the willful destruction of evidence to impede a federal investigation.
Corporate governance are mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated ("governed").
Analysis Group, Inc. (AG), founded in 1981 by economists Bruce E. Stangle and Michael F. Koehn, is an economic consulting firm based in North America. It provides economic, financial, and strategic analysis and expert testimony to law firms, corporations, and government agencies.
Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information. The setups are generally made to result in monetary gain for the deceivers, and generally result in unfair monetary losses for the investors. They are generally violating securities laws.
LECG Corporation was an American consulting company based in Emeryville, California. It provided independent expert testimony on behalf of corporations, produced authoritative studies for industry, conducted economic and financial analyses on disputes and issues, and provided strategic advisory and financial advisory services to clients. In March 2011, the company was liquidated as it was unable to service its debt obligations.
Joseph Grundfest is an American academic. He is the William A. Franke Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Rock Center on Corporate Governance at Stanford University. He joined Stanford's faculty in 1990 after having served for more than four years as a Commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, a position to which he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
Charles River Associates is a global consulting firm headquartered in Boston. The firm provides expert testimony and litigation support, strategic advice, and analysis to law firms, corporations, accounting firms, and governments.
The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse is a website that serves as a searchable resource for information and documents relating to civil rights litigation. The Clearinghouse was founded by law professor Margo Schlanger in 2005, at Washington University in St. Louis, and moved in 2009 to the University of Michigan.
Anya Verkhovskaya is a Moscow-born consultant, chief operating officer, Expert Witness, and Human Rights Activist. She is the founder of Class Experts Group, LLC. and former Managing Director of DRRT. Verkhovskaya currently serves as the President of Class Experts Group, LLC.
Berkeley Research Group, LLC (BRG) is a global consulting firm that helps organizations with assistance in disputes and investigations, corporate finance, and performance improvement and advisory. BRG is headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices across the United States and in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East and the United Kingdom. As of January 2023, it has more than 1,300 employees across more than forty offices.
Compass Lexecon is a global economic consulting firm founded in 1977 with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. It provides analysis of economic issues pertaining to competition practice and competition law for use in legal and regulatory proceedings, strategic decisions, and public policy debates. Compass Lexecon operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent firm FTI Consulting.
Bates White LLC. is a privately held economic consulting firm specializing in advanced economic, financial, and econometric analysis. The firm was founded in 1999 and currently has one office in Washington, D.C., with about 250 employees. The firm provides economic consulting and expert testimony.
A securities class action (SCA), or securities fraud class action, is a lawsuit filed by investors who bought or sold a company's publicly traded securities within a specific period of time and suffered economic injury as a result of violations of the securities laws.
Fideres Partners LLP (Fideres) is an international economic consulting firm that specializes in investigating corporate and financial wrongdoing. It provides economic analysis to competition regulators, law firms and their clients, from preliminary investigation to expert testimony. Fideres was founded following the 2008 financial crisis.
Bruce Edward Stangle is an American economist who served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Analysis Group from 1981 to 2004. He and Michael F. Koehn co-founded the management consultancy in 1981 in Boston, Massachusetts. After stepping down as chief executive Stangle continued to lead Analysis Group as chairman until 2016. He began his career as a senior economist for Arthur D. Little from 1978 to 1980.
Bradley J. Bondi is an American lawyer, law professor, and partner at Paul Hastings LLP, where he is the Global Co-Chair of the firm's Investigations and White Collar Defense practice. He has also served on the executive staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was appointed to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis to investigate its causes.
NERA Economic Consulting, Inc., or National Economic Research Associates, is an economic consulting firm founded in 1961. It was the first consulting firm dedicated to methodically applying microeconomic theory to litigation and regulatory matters. The firm applies econometric and statistical analysis to provide strategy, studies, reports, expert testimony, and policy recommendations for government authorities, law firms, and corporations.
David H. Webber is the author of The Rise of the Working Class Shareholder: Labor's Last Best Weapon and Associate Dean for Intellectual Life at Boston University School of Law, where he writes about shareholder activism and litigation.
Economic consulting is the practice of providing advanced economic, financial, and statistical analysis for use in a litigation environment. Law firms, state institutions, and other organizations may rely on economic consultants to produce research, analyses, reports, and testimony to be used in trial.
