J. J. Blonien & Associates, Inc. v. Community Newspapers, Inc.

How later courts describe this case

• stating that pleading with particularity “[m]eans the who, what, when, where, and how: the first paragraph of any newspaper story.”
• requiring the pleader to provide the equivalent of a “first paragraph of any newspaper story”
• “Fees for two years' audits could not approach the losses E & W would suffer from a perception that it would muffle a client's fraud.”
• accountant under no legal duty to blow whistle on client upon discovery that client was in financial trouble
• investors must point to some fact suggesting that [the] difference [between favorable projections and actual health] is attributable to fraud
• "People sometimes act irrationally, but indulging ready inferences of irrationality would too easily allow the inference that ordinary business reverses are fraud”
• “‘[C]ircumstances’ must be pleaded in detail. This means the who, what, when, where, and how: the first paragraph of any newspaper story.”
• "[T]he complaint ... must afford a basis for believing that plaintiffs could prove scienter."