CorpLawBlog has a post about a decision by a New York Federal Court today in which Judge Milton Pollack dismissed "complaints seeking damages for supposedly overly optimistic dot com research reports issued by Merrill Lynch and its former research analyst Henry Blodget." Quoth Judge Pollack:
The record clearly reveals that plaintiffs were among the high-risk speculators who, knowing full well or being properly chargeable with appreciation of the unjustifiable risks they were undertaking in the extremely volatile and highly untested stocks at issue, now hope to twist the federal securities laws into a scheme of cost-free speculators� insurance. Seeking to lay the blame for the enormous Internet Bubble solely at the feet of a single actor, Merrill Lynch, plaintiffs would have this Court conclude that the federal securities laws were meant to underwrite, subsidize, and encourage their rash speculation in joining a freewheeling casino that lured thousands obsessed with the fantasy of Olympian riches, but which delivered such riches to only a scant handful of lucky winners. Those few lucky winners, who are not before the Court, now hold the monies that the unlucky plaintiffs have lost -- fair and square -- and they will never return those monies to plaintiffs. Had plaintiffs themselves won the game instead of losing, they would have owed not a single penny of their winnings to those they left to hold the bag (or to defendants).
That's putting things pretty succinctly! Thanks again to CorpLawBlog for the post, where you'll find a link to the complete order. UPDATE: Here's an article from the New York Law Journal on the order.