Judge rejects BlackBerry's request to dismiss revived 2013 class action suit claiming it used BlackBerry 10 prospects to inflate stock price, defraud investors
Context & Ripple Effects
BlackBerry spent 2017 rebuilding its market story around software and licensing, capped by the preliminary $815M Qualcomm arbitration award that sent the stock up more than 15%. This ruling keeps an older chapter open: a revived 2013 class action alleging the company talked up BlackBerry 10 prospects to prop up the share price while the handset business collapsed.
The procedural arc mirrors what plaintiffs have achieved elsewhere — including the Musk ex-Twitter shareholder fraud suit, where a dismissal bid was rejected years after filing — showing courts willing to let investor-fraud claims reach discovery long after the underlying product cycle ended.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry now faces full discovery and potential trial exposure over 2013-era statements about BlackBerry 10 demand, with executives and directors drawn into depositions rather than getting the case quashed at the motion-to-dismiss stage.
Second-order effects
- An unresolved five-year-old fraud claim hangs over the licensing-and-software pivot the company was marketing to investors — the same pivot that produced the patent suits against Facebook, Snap and Twitter — giving counterparties leverage in any settlement negotiation.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across these cases — revival here, the dismissed-then-revived Musk suit, and Apple's app-store class being decertified over a flawed damages model — points toward securities litigation turning on damages methodology and pleading durability, with early dismissals no longer ending claims filed against a company's prior strategy era.
The trend: Securities-fraud class actions are increasingly surviving motions to dismiss years after the alleged misstatements, forcing companies to litigate legacy-era disclosures alongside their current business pivots.