Lawsuits are probably like water off a very fat duck's back to Nvidia, but that doesn't mean it'll just roll over for them. In fact, it looks like the chip giant would rather have them dismissed before they even enter litigation.
The US Supreme Court has just heard Nvidia's appeal against a lower court's decision to move forward with a class action lawsuit from 2018 (via Reuters). This lawsuit claims that Nvidia misled its investors by downplaying how much of its sales and revenue depended on the crypto market, thereby breaking the 1934 Securities Exchange Act.
We've already seen Nvidia pay out for not disclosing such crypto dependency. In 2022, Nvidia settled for $5.5 million with the Securities and Exchange Commission for not adequately disclosing the extent to which crypto mining was responsible for its GPU sales and revenue.
Which, one might remember, was an extent great enough for scalpers to go crazy for the RTX 30-series and for Nvidia to push out "Lite Hash Rate" (LHR) versions of its graphics cards.
The 2018 lawsuit that's resurfaced is separate from this, though. In fact, it has a pretty turbulent history itself, having been previously dismissed in 2021 but then resuscitated by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, Nvidia's attempting to bat it down again by claiming it's not up to snuff.
The current argument in the Supreme Court surrounds whether this 2018 lawsuit is strong enough to be brought forward given the rules outlined in the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, an act that attempts to prevent frivolous litigation.
According to Reuters, in response to Nvidia's argument, Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated: "I guess my concern is that you appear to be requiring for plaintiffs to actually have the evidence in order to plead their case," while such evidence is often usually not given until a later stage.
In other words, and to simplify massively, it seems like Nvidia could be claiming that the litigants need more evidence to have the lawsuit considered in the courts in the first place.
But the plaintiffs can counter this by saying that proving the claims of a lawsuit is what happens after the lawsuit's been accepted for consideration. Where the line between these two positions should be drawn—where the threshold for lawsuit consideration should be—is what the Supreme Court is considering.
This is why Reuters also mentions that the lawsuit is "one of two cases heard by the Supreme Court this month that could lead to rulings making it harder for private litigants to hold companies to account for alleged securities fraud", the other one involving Meta.
If Nvidia wins its appeal, it could set a precedent regarding what evidence threshold needs to be given for a class action lawsuit against big companies to even be considered.
The burning question on my mind, however, is this: With Nvidia doing so well, this resuscitated and continuing lawsuit surely can't be being pushed by those 2018 investors who stuck around and must by now be laughing all the way to the bank, can it? Perhaps it's being pushed by those who dipped out back then and are kicking themselves. I know I would be.
