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by jakewalker 3852 days ago
The standards for adequately pleading a securities fraud lawsuit -- which this was -- are incredibly high, and the plaintiff has to meet that standard without access to any discovery from the Defendant (here, Yelp). Which is all a way of saying that it is extremely difficult to read too much into the dismissal of a securities fraud lawsuit.

The judge in this case was basically concluding that plaintiff -- a Yelp investor -- could not adequately allege in his complaint that Yelp or its executives made a false statement of material fact in connection with the sale of a security. And plaintiff had an extremely high burden to survive such a motion to dismiss because of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Securities_Litigation_...).

So, in short, there is very little that one can conclude about Yelp's actual practices (for better or for worse) from learning that a securities lawsuit like this was dismissed.