FirstEnergy Investors Win Class Status Despite Appellate Setback

Eight months after a federal appeals court snatched class status away from FirstEnergy Corp. investors who sued over a bribery scandal, a district court judge on Thursday bestowed that status again.

Judge Algenon L. Marbley said that in his first class certification order in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, two alternate legal standards supported a presumption that all the investors relied on alleged company misstatements and omissions. Even though the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit removed one of those bases—a more lenient standard for presuming reliance on a public company’s omissions—the other ...