Opinion
Civil Action 20-200
08-08-2024
ALLEGHENY COUNTY EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM et al., Plaintiffs, v. ENERGY TRANSFER LP et al., Defendants.
ORDER
Gerald Austin McHugh United States District Judge
This 8th day of August, 2024, for the reasons in the accompanying Memorandum, it is hereby ORDERED that Plaintiffs' Partial Motion for Summary Judgement (ECF 182) is DENIED in part and GRANTED in part, as follows:
1. As to capacity statements from November 2017 through January 2018 and their accompanying scienter, Plaintiffs' Motion is DENIED. Several genuine issues remain as to whether Defendants had decided to use the smaller 12-inch pipeline by the time they asserted the 275,000-capacity corresponding to the 20-inch pipeline at investor conferences, and thus, whether Defendants knew their statements would be false or misleading to investors.
2. As to the remaining capacity statements from February 2018 through June 2018 and their accompanying scienter, Plaintiffs' Motion is GRANTED. Plaintiffs present irrefutable evidence that Long, McCrea, and Ramsey knew that the initial capacity would be less than 275,000, making their repetition of outdated initial capacity statements at conferences false or misleading.
Defendant Warren remains a party, with issues to be resolved by a jury. Even in the absence of liability on his part, the scienter of Defendants Long, McCrea, and Ramsey is sufficient to attribute the statements at issue to Energy Transfer.