In Tracinda Corp. v. DaimlerChrysler AG,  2007 WL 2701965 (3rd Cir., Del.), read opinion here, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed a decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, after a bench trial,  and found no misrepresentation under the securities laws based on statements by the former CEO that allegedly refuted the initial description of the merger of DaimlerChrysler as a "merger of equals". Of course now that Chrysler is a separate entity owned by a private equity group, this case may only be a historical footnote, but it is still useful as a pronouncement of the Third Circuit’s views on misrepresentation claims.

The Third Circuit also affirmed (with a dissenting opinion) the trial court’s award of over $500,000 in costs against the defendants due to late production of documents. In addition, parenthetically,  it should be noted that the trial court had written a somewhat "sympathetic" opinion early in the case that denied a motion to dismiss–which of course was not in any way a harbinger of the final post-trial opinion. Also notable is that many of the shareholders in the case took a prescient settlement prior to the trial.