The Theranos Story, ch. 53: No more blood to squeeze out of this particular rock

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rock-1-crop-2.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Rock. On. The latest chapter in the Last Throes of Theranos is the action by plaintiffs Robert Colman, Hilary Taubman-Dye, and other indirect Theranos investors to settle their lawsuit before there is nothing left. The settlement was made late last week in the US District Court of Northern California for an undisclosed amount.

The plaintiffs originally proposed a class action which would have included about 200 other individuals investing through various funds.This was denied by the District Court in early June, but the ruling permitted individual lawsuits. The class action would have been under California state law, as indirect investors are not eligible through Federal securities law.

Mr. Colman was an early (2013) investor through Lucas Venture Group and Ms. Taubman-Dye was a third-party investor through SharesPost in 2015 [TTA 30 Nov 16]. Their charges centered around Theranos’ false and misleading statements made by the company, They were excluded from the share buyback a few months later when there were still some funds in the company [TTA 29 Mar 17] and before Fortress Investment Group put in their funding (December). Their legal action was brought not only against Theranos, former COO Sunny Balwani, and former CEO/founder Elizabeth Holmes but also–interestingly–the SEC (Law360). 

A sidelight to this is that there is an HBO documentary about Theranos in progress. The filmmaker Alex Gibney has sought to make public video depositions from two Theranos cases, according to the WSJ (paywalled). Judge Cousins ordered Theranos to work with Mr. Gibney’s lawyer to determine what excerpts of recordings will be released. Mr. Gibney better get his skates on while there’s still interest in the barely-breathing Theranos–or Ms. Holmes pulls the full Saint Joan reenactment in a Home for the Very, Very Nervous. MarketWatch, Bloomberg, Becker’s Hospital Review  Our TTA coverage is indexed here.