You’re mixing emotional jury appeal with recoverable damages. Federal securities claims are limited to actual damages, not punitive damages. So the “real money is punitive damages” argument does not apply to the federal securities claims.
Even if NWBO can still argue punitive damages under a New York fraud claim, that still does not create an unlimited jackpot. Any punitive award would still have to survive legal standards, jury instructions, post-trial motions, constitutional limits, and appeal. A jury does not simply get a blank check to punish Wall Street because NWBO is a cancer company.
If a jury did award large punitive damages, that would not mean NWBO gets a check the next day. A large punitive award would almost certainly trigger post-trial motions and appeals, which could take years. So even the bullish punitive-damages scenario is not simply “jury gets mad, NWBO gets $1B.” By then, NWBO may not even be around to collect it.
The court already narrowed the surviving damages to specific stock sales tied to closing prices on alleged spoofing dates. “Cancer Company versus Wall Street” may make for a great movie, but the legal question is still what damages can be tied to the specific transactions the court allowed.
Also, the Canaccord settlement cuts both ways. It may reflect defendant concern over discovery or trial risk, but it may also reflect NWBO choosing certainty over years of cost, delay, uncertainty, and appeals. If this were an obvious slam-dunk billion-dollar case, why assume NWBO would be eager to settle before getting to that jury jackpot?
You also seem to undercut your own argument. On one hand, you say the real money is punitive damages from an angry jury, but then say the market makers will likely settle before the jury takes the seat. If they settle before trial, then where is the jury punitive-damages jackpot coming from?
Settlements usually do not establish punitive damages. They are negotiated resolutions, often with no admission of liability. A defendant may settle to avoid the risk of punitive damages, but the settlement itself is not the same thing as a punitive-damages award.
And the Canaccord settlement does not mean Canaccord’s alleged share of the damages stays in the pot. To the extent that portion is resolved by settlement, NWBO cannot recover the same injury twice from the remaining defendants. Since punitive damages generally have to bear some relationship to actual harm, a settlement does not necessarily strengthen the jackpot theory.
My $80M example was not a prediction. It was showing that even an extreme $2/share compensatory damages assumption across the narrowed share count does not get close to $1B. To get to $1B, punitive damages would have to do almost all the work, and that is speculation, not analysis.
At this point, even a biased reader should be able to tell which one of us really doesn't know what we’re talking about.
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