May 18, 2020
Bernstein Liebhard LLP announced today that the court appointed the Firm as lead counsel in a securities class action lawsuit pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of those who purchased the securities of Beyond Meat Inc. (“Beyond Meat” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: BYND) between May 2, 2019, and January 27, 2020 (the “Class Period”).
The initial complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company’s business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Beyond Meat’s termination of its supply agreement with Don Lee Farms constituted a breach of that agreement, thus exposing the Company to foreseeable legal liability and reputational harm; (ii) Beyond Meat and certain of its employees had doctored and omitted material information from a food safety consultants’ report, which the Company represented as accurate to Don Lee; and (iii) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
On January 27, 2020, post-market, Don Lee Farms issued a press release announcing that “Judge Rules Don Lee Farms Likely to Obtain a Judgment. Beyond Meat’s CFO and Others Named Individually for Fraud.” The release announced, among other things, that “[a] judge has ruled Don Lee Farms proved the probable validity of its claim that Beyond Meat breached its manufacturing agreement with Don Lee Farms” and that “[i]n a separate motion before a different Judge, the Court granted Don Lee Farms’ request to name Beyond Meat Chief Financial Officer Mark Nelson, Senior Quality Assurance Manager Jessica Quetsch and Director of Operations Anthony Miller in its fraud claims which allege they intentionally doctored and omitted material information from a food safety consultant’s report, and then delivered that doctored report to Don Lee Farms and affirmatively represented that it was the complete opinion of the consultant.”
On this news, Beyond Meat’s stock price fell precipitously over the next two trading days closing at $114.88 on January 29, 2020.
Since 1993, Bernstein Liebhard LLP has recovered over $3.5 billion for its clients. In addition to representing individual investors, the Firm has been retained by some of the largest public and private pension funds in the country to monitor their assets and pursue litigation on their behalf. As a result of its success litigating hundreds of lawsuits and class actions, the Firm has been named to The National Law Journal’s “Plaintiffs’ Hot List” thirteen times and listed in The Legal 500 for twelve consecutive years.
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Contact Information
Stephanie M. Beige
Bernstein Liebhard LLP
http://www.bernlieb.com
(877) 779-1414
beige@bernlieb.com
