OPINION ANALYSIS

The court heard the arguments NVIDIA Corp v. E. Ohman J:or Fonder AB on November 13th. (Amy Lutz via Shutterstock)

Judges on Wednesday dismissed a dispute over a securities fraud case against graphics chip maker NVIDIA. Shareholders argued that NVIDIA failed to disclose how sales to crypto miners rather than gaming companies threatened their shares. The court heard NVIDIA Corp v. E. Ohman J:or Fonder AB just last month, but the layoff wasn’t a surprise. The dominant theme of the argument was repeated comments from justices that the dispute was too fact-specific to warrant their attention.

The specific question in this case was whether the complaint in this case was sufficiently specific to constitute an allegation of fraud under the high pleading standard for securities fraud suits under the Private Securities Legal Reform Act. Now the case will be sent back to court so investors can try to prove their case against NVIDIA. This is a significant defeat for NVIDIA, which understandably had good reason to hope that the justices would overturn the lower court’s decision once they agreed to hear the case.