Court Opinion

ID: 9424146
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:10:31.865262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:48.445664
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I substantially agree with Parts II and III of the Court’s opinion holding that these stockholders have sufficiently proved a violation of § 14 (a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and are thus entitled to recover whatever damages they have suffered as a result of the misleading corporate statements, or perhaps to an equitable setting aside of the merger itself. I do not agree, however, to what appears to be the holding in Part IV that stockholders who hire lawyers to prosecute their claims in such a case can recover attorneys’ fees in the absence of a valid contractual agreement so providing or an explicit statute creating such a right of recovery. The courts are interpreters, not creators, of legal rights to recover and if there is a need for recovery of attorneys’ fees to effectuate the policies of the Act here involved, that need should in my judgment be met by Congress, not by this Court.