In re Vaxart, Inc. Securities Litigation

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

In re VAXART, INC. SECURITIES Case No. 20-cv-05949-VC

LITIGATION

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND

DENYING IN PART DEFENDANTS’

MOTION TO DISMISS

Re: Dkt. Nos. 138, 139

This is an unusual securities fraud case. The complaint easily satisfies the “scienter” requirement that private plaintiffs often struggle with. It cogently alleges that Vaxart issued a series of statements with the intent to mislead the investing public into believing that the company was—like Pfizer and Moderna—on the precipice of mass-producing a successful coronavirus vaccine. Private plaintiffs tend to have less difficulty alleging that a company’s statements were materially misleading. But here, the question whether the complaint adequately alleges that Vaxart’s statements were materially misleading to a reasonable investor is somewhat challenging. That is because the company’s press releases and other statements included several accurate passages alongside highly misleading ones, thus potentially allowing an investor to sift through the statements and discern that Vaxart’s statements about its vaccine development project were not to be trusted.…