Professor Joseph Grundfest weighs in on decreasing amounts of class action lawsuits in the wake of recent Supreme Court rulings for Bloomberg News. 

There were 78 securities class actions filed in the first half of 2014, down from 91 in the latter half of 2013 but up slightly from the 75 in the first half of that year, according to an Aug. 6 report from Cornerstone Research.

The 2014 number is down from the half-year average of 95 from 1997 to 2013.

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“Had that decision gone the other way, the already low numbers of class action filings would have been even lower, and would likely be trending toward zero,” Joseph Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School and former Securities and Exchange Commissioner, said in a news release.

Grundfest runs the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse at Stanford, which compiled the data on the class actions.

Halliburton “preserved class action securities fraud litigation,” he said.

“It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court's ruling will accelerate the demand for rigorous economic analysis related to the price impact (if any) of an alleged misrepresentation, providing defendants with a possible way to truncate a case earlier,” the report said.