Shareholder class actions can have significant consequences for defendant issuers. Although there have yet to be any judgments against an issuer in a shareholder class action in Canada, there have been many settlements. In this article from Class Action Defence Quarterly, NERA Vice President Bradley A. Heys discusses how, when considering economic damages in such cases, there are many issues that can arise for which an economist can employ a wide range of tools and techniques to estimate damages and enable litigants to make more informed decisions. Mr. Heys describes the factors that influence settlement amounts in these cases; the types of analyses that can be used to separate out potential damages from shareholder losses that are unrelated to the alleged misrepresentations or omissions; and how aggregate class-wide damages might be estimated in the absence of shareholder-specific information.

Reprinted by permission of LexisNexis Canada Inc., from the Class Action Defence Quarterly, Edited by Kathryn Chalmers, Copyright 2012.