Prominent short seller Andrew Left fails to end US SEC fraud case

A federal judge rejected Andrew Left's bid to dismiss a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil lawsuit accusing the prominent short seller of fraudulently manipulating stock prices, and profiting from trades that contradicted his public statements. In a decision released on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in Los Angeles said reasonable investors would want to know if Left and his firm Citron Research were following their own stock recommendations. Garnett said the law supports the SEC theory that defendants who declare their trade positions for investors to follow "have a duty to tell the whole truth -- namely their underlying intent to trade inconsistently with their published target prices."