Peregrine Securities Fraud
Result: $45 million settlement
Year: 2006
Allocco v. Gardner Securities Fraud Litigation
Lieff Cabraser represented Lawrence L. Garlick, the co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Remedy Corporation and 24 other former senior executives and directors of Remedy Corporation in a private (non-class) securities fraud lawsuit against Stephen P. Gardner, the former Chief Executive Officer of Peregrine Systems, Inc., John J. Moores, Peregrine’s former Chairman of the Board, Matthew C. Gless, Peregrine’s former Chief Financial Officer, Peregrine’s accounting firm Arthur Andersen and certain entities that entered into fraudulent transactions with Peregrine.
The lawsuit, filed in California state court, arose out of Peregrine’s August 2001 acquisition of Remedy. Plaintiffs charged that they were induced to exchange their Remedy stock for Peregrine stock on the basis of false and misleading representations made by defendants. Within months of the Remedy acquisition, Peregrine began to reveal to the public that it had grossly overstated its revenue during the years 2000-2002, and eventually restated more than $500 million in revenues.
After successfully defeating demurrers brought by defendants, including third parties who were customers of Peregrine who aided and abetted Peregrine’s accounting fraud under California common law, plaintiffs reached a series of settlements. The settling defendants included Arthur Andersen, all of the director defendants, three officer defendants and the third party customer defendants KPMG, British Telecom, Fujitsu, Software Spectrum and Bindview. The total amount received in settlements was approximately $45 million.
