Opinion ID: 217402
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pleading an underlying violation

Text: The district court concluded that Plaintiffs failed to plead an underlying violation because they had failed to plead scienter on the part of Burns, Richter, Dana, or other Dana employees as part of their section 10(b) claims. This conclusion cannot stand in light of our contrary determination above. Because Plaintiffs have adequately pleaded scienter as to Burns and RichterDana's chief executive officer and chief financial officerthey have also pleaded scienter as to Dana. Cf. City of Monroe Emps. Ret. Sys. v. Bridgestone Corp., 399 F.3d 651, 688 (6th Cir.2005) (Ono's awareness of the claims as gleaned from these meetings is directly attributable to Bridgestone because `knowledge of a corporate officer or agent acting within the scope of his authority is attributable to the corporation.' (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted)); cf. also Thompson v. RelationServe Media, Inc., 610 F.3d 628, 635 (11th Cir.2010) (Corporations have no state of mind of their own; rather, the scienter of their agents must be imputed to them.); Adams v. Kinder-Morgan, Inc., 340 F.3d 1083, 1106 (10th Cir.2003) (citation omitted) (The scienter of the senior controlling officers of a corporation may be attributed to the corporation itself to establish liability as a primary violator of § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 when those senior officials were acting within the scope of their apparent authority.). If Burns and Richter acted with scienter in causing Dana to make false statements, then Dana had scienter with regard to those statements, too.