The first half of 2012 has not seen the series of landmark Supreme Court decisions that were handed down in 2011, but it has been a significant period as lower courts apply these decisions in different areas and in a number of different contexts. And the Supreme Court did decide one case–Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC v. Simmonds, 132 S. Ct. 1414 (2012)–relating to the statute of limitations under Section 16 of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, and granted review in two other cases–Amgen, Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend–that are likely to result in watershed rulings on the issue of class certification in securities class actions.

Securities litigation filing trends remain generally steady in the face of these developments, with securities class action filings increasing only slightly in the first half of 2012, and the filings against particular sectors staying roughly similar to last year, with filings against financial industry companies at their lowest level since 2008. One particularly noteworthy development is that not a single securities class action filing thus far in 2012 has named an accounting firm as a defendant, possibly as a result of the Supreme Court’s rejection of aiding and abetting liability under the securities laws, emphatically reinforced last year in Janus Capital Group Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, 131 S. Ct. 2296 (2012) (in which Gibson Dunn represented Janus).

Some of the most significant case law and legislative developments in the first half of 2012 are summarized below.

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