COVID-19 : des CA et des dirigeants à risque de recours judiciaires ?

The Canadien Underwriter propose dans un article paru le 22 avril 2020 un bel article dans le contexte du COVID-19 : « Liability claims that could arise from the pandemic ». Des recours judiciaires en perspective contre les CA et les directions ?

Extrait :

One result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will be liability claims against company boards, property and casualty industry watchers predict.

“I think we will see litigation coming out of this,” Shara Roy, a partner with law firm Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffin LLP, which defends publicly traded companies in class action lawsuits.

Publicly-traded firms have been sued in the past after share prices dropped as a result of what Roy calls “external factors.”

With the pandemic, there could be allegations that boards of directors did not have proper governance or risk management practices, said Jim Auden, Chicago-based managing director of North American Insurance at Fitch Ratings, in an interview Tuesday.

Corporate clients – as well as their directors and officers – are exposed to misrepresentation lawsuits if the company’s share price drops. Usually what happens is shareholders allege a company, as well as individual directors and officers, had misrepresented the financial health of the firm.

In the case of COVID-19, clients could defend themselves by referring to statements they made in securities filings before the outbreak, Roy said in an interview about stock market fluctuations  during the first quarter of 2020. This depends on exactly what those firms said in those filings (such as management discussion and analysis) before the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.

“If they do address it, it has to be specific,” said Roy. “It cannot be boilerplate and it needs to deal with the impact on their business directly.”

That said, publicly traded firms are not generally required to interpret the external, political, economic and social developments on their own finances, Roy said, quoting guidance from the Canadian Securities Administrators.

What could hurt the client’s directors and officers is if they told the financial markets they were well-prepared for this type of crisis.

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Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 11 juin 2020 à 15 h 31 min.

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