Most recently, for example, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a unanimous Court in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., issued a decision that makes it easier for plaintiffs to certify class actions in securities fraud cases, by holding that they are not required to prove loss causation at the certification stage. Justice Scalia similarly delivered the decision for a unanimous Court in January 2011 in Thompson v. North American Stainless, LP4 holding that the plaintiff Thompson could maintain his claim for retaliation under Title VII even though he had not himself engaged in protected activity, because he alleged that he had been terminated in retaliation for the fact that his fiancée had filed a charge of sex discrimination against their common employer. Yet another recent unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that arguably was anti-business was Matrixx Intiatives, Inc. v. Siracusano, in which the five Republican-appointed Justices joined a majority opinion by Justice Sotomayor holding that plaintiffs could bring a securities fraud case based on “a pharmaceutical company’s failure to disclose reports of adverse events associated with a product [where] the reports do not disclose a statistically significant number of adverse events.”
