Motion Victory in Vaxart, Inc. Securities Litigation

Scott+Scott Beats Defendants’ Summary Judgement Motion and Obtains Spoliation Sanctions Against Hedge Fund in In re Vaxart, Inc. Securities Litigation [UPDATED]

(English only)

NEW YORK — Scott+Scott this week secured important sanctions and summary judgment motion victories in a long-running securities action against hedge fund Armistice Capital and its two executives, who had invested heavily in Vaxart, Inc., a biotechnology company.  

Judge Vince Chhabria of the United States District Court, Northern District of California, denied defendants’ motion for summary judgement in full, sustaining plaintiffs’ scheme liability and insider trading claims, and simultaneously finding defendants in violation of Fed. R. Civ. P. 37 for their deletion of text messages crucial to the action. 

“A reasonable jury could find that the defendants engaged in conduct that had the principal purpose and effect of creating a false appearance of fact in furtherance of a scheme to defraud,” Judge Chhabria noted in the Court’s order denying summary judgment. 

In the Court’s order granting spoliation sanctions, Judge Chhabria wrote that “The plaintiffs have shown that it is more likely than not that Boyd [one of the two individual defendants, added for context] deleted his texts ‘with the purpose of avoiding its discovery by an adverse party.’” 

On August, 15, 2025, as part of granting the plaintiffs’ Motion for Spoliation Sanctions, Judge Chhabria granted Scott+Scott and its co-counsel attorneys’ fees in the amount of $1.1 million to cover “reasonable fees and costs incurred by the plaintiffs in litigation the motion.”

The case is scheduled to go to trial in October 2025. 

The case is: In re Vaxart, Inc. Securities Litigation, No. 20-cv-05949-VC (N.D. Cal.), and the Scott+Scott team of attorneys includes William C. Fredericks and Jeffrey P. Jacobson.