In re Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. Securities Litigation

Background

The opinion concerns Plaintiffs’ application to supplement the summary-judgment record and exceed the court’s limits on exhibits and affidavits. The application responded to two evidentiary objections Defendants raised in their reply to Plaintiffs’ response to Defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

The parties’ positions

Defendants argued that documents cited by Plaintiffs’ experts were not part of the summary-judgment record because Plaintiffs had submitted excerpts from the expert reports rather than the underlying documents. Defendants also objected in part that Plaintiffs’ expert reports were unsworn.

Plaintiffs argued that their experts had relied on the documents in forming their opinions and that the documents could be presented in admissible form at trial. Plaintiffs also argued that the 2010 amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 no longer required expert declarations to be sworn at the summary-judgment stage when the opinions could be presented in admissible form at trial. To address the objections, Plaintiffs sought permission to submit excerpts from the documents and three sworn, one-page declarations affirming their experts’ reports.

Ruling

The court’s order states that the application is DENIED. The scanned opinion text is incomplete in the sentence explaining the reason for that denial, so the full rationale is unclear from the provided text. The court also states that Plaintiffs’ motion to seal is DENIED as moot and directs the Clerk of Court to close docket entries 295, 296, and 297.

The order addresses evidentiary materials connected to summary judgment; it does not state a ruling on the underlying securities claims or on the summary-judgment motion itself.