Thomas Przybylowski: Securities Plaintiffs' Bar Retools as AI, Tariff and Private Credit Lawsuits Surge in 2026

The New York and New Jersey litigation attorney says a quiet year in securities filings concealed a shift toward new legal theories now driving a wave of 2026 case activity, plus one regulatory fight that could reshape the class-action mechanism itself.

NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Securities class action filings fell in 2025, and the plaintiffs' bar's aggregate attorneys' fees dropped 25 percent along with them. Read on its own, that looks like a retreat. According to Thomas Przybylowski, a litigation attorney who has represented plaintiffs in securities fraud matters in New York and New Jersey, it wasn't a retreat at all. It was a retooling year, and the first half of 2026 shows what came out of it.

"The dip in 2025 wasn't the plaintiffs' bar slowing down," said Przybylowski. "It was the plaintiffs' bar figuring out where the next set of cases would come from. The 2026 filing data shows exactly where they landed."

AI-Washing Moves From Novelty to Core Business

Eighteen AI-related securities suits were filed in the first half of 2026 alone, already surpassing all 17 filed during the whole of 2025, according to a mid-year report from NERA Economic Consulting. Standard claims under Rule 10b-5, Section 11 or Section 12 still accounted for the overwhelming majority of federal securities filings in the same period, meaning plaintiffs aren't inventing new causes of action. They're pointing an established fraud statute at a new category of corporate disclosure.

"Plaintiffs aren't inventing new legal theories to reach these cases," Przybylowski said. "They're pointing the same fraud statute at a new category of disclosure: AI capability claims, AI revenue projections, AI integration timelines. Any company whose investor communications lean on AI language needs to treat those statements with the same scrutiny as a revenue forecast."

New Targets: Tariffs, Pump-and-Dump and Private Credit

Two smaller but distinct filing trends have also emerged, according to Cornerstone Research data. Since August 2025, six tariff-related securities suits have been filed, generally alleging that companies overstated their ability to manage the impact of tariffs. Separately, ten pump-and-dump filings have appeared since November 2025, nearly all of them against non-U.S. issuers. A newer development, Przybylowski said, is more consequential: private credit lenders are increasingly being treated like traditional public issuers under Rule 10b-5, with plaintiffs alleging misstatements about portfolio performance and asset valuations. That trend extends securities fraud theories into a lending market that hasn't historically had to think of itself in class-action terms.

A Forum Fight That's Fading, and a Pleading Fight That's Intensifying

Przybylowski has previously written about the unresolved question of whether the discovery stay under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act follows Securities Act of 1933 claims into state court, an issue unsettled since the Supreme Court's Cyan v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund decision in 2018. New filing data suggests plaintiffs are increasingly declining to test that question at all: only three '33 Act claims were filed in state court through the third quarter of 2025, putting last year on track for the lowest annual total since Cyan was decided, a trend Przybylowski attributes in part to the Supreme Court's Slack Technologies v. Pirani decision, which has made those claims harder to plead regardless of forum.

At the same time, plaintiffs are testing how far the pleading stage itself can stretch. Courts remain divided over crediting expert opinions offered to support fraud allegations before discovery begins, a strategy that gained traction after a Ninth Circuit decision involving Nvidia Corp. Short-seller reports face similar skepticism: the Fourth Circuit recently affirmed dismissal of a case built around a short-seller report accusing a quantum computing company of running a "quantum Ponzi scheme", finding the report too unreliable to establish loss causation on its own.

"The discovery stay means plaintiffs have to build a viable complaint before they ever see a company's internal documents," Przybylowski said. "Expert reports and short-seller research are the tools counsel are reaching for to fill that gap, and courts are still deciding how much weight either one deserves."

The Development That Could Change the Business Model, Not Just the Theories

On September 17, 2025, the SEC reversed its longstanding position and announced that mandatory arbitration provisions in a company's governing documents will no longer factor into whether the agency accelerates a registration statement. That shift could open the door to companies adopting arbitration provisions that route investor disputes out of court and out of the class-action system entirely. Plaintiffs' firms have already signaled they will challenge any such provision a company adopts.

"If that fight goes the wrong way for plaintiffs at scale, it doesn't just shift where cases get filed or which theories succeed," Przybylowski said. "It removes the class-action mechanism entirely for the companies that adopt arbitration provisions. That is a different order of change than anything else happening in securities litigation right now."

By the Numbers

• 118 new federal securities class actions filed in the first half of 2026, with full-year filings on pace to reach roughly 236, above the prior peak set in 2023 (NERA Economic Consulting)
• 18 AI-related securities suits filed in the first half of 2026 alone, already exceeding all of 2025 (NERA Economic Consulting)
• Only 3 Securities Act of 1933 claims filed in state court through Q3 2025, the lowest annual pace since Cyan v. Beaver County (2018) (Skadden)
• 6 tariff-related and 10 pump-and-dump securities suits filed since August and November 2025, respectively (Cornerstone Research)
• Sept. 17, 2025: the SEC reversed its position on mandatory arbitration provisions in corporate governing documents (SEC)

The Question Boards and General Counsel Should Be Asking

"The right question isn't whether your company could be sued under one of these theories," Przybylowski said. "Almost any company that talks publicly about AI capabilities, tariff exposure, or credit performance could be. The right question is whether your disclosure committee has actually reviewed the AI-washing, tariff and pump-and-dump complaints filed against companies like yours, and adjusted its own public statements accordingly."

Przybylowski said the throughline across every trend he's tracking is the same: the plaintiffs' bar is not shrinking, it's moving, and the companies and counsel who treat 2025's filing numbers as the whole story will be the least prepared for what 2026 is already showing.

About Thomas Przybylowski

Thomas Przybylowski is a commercial litigation attorney with extensive experience representing businesses, executives, investors, and organizations in complex commercial litigation, securities fraud matters, contract disputes, corporate governance, and other high-stakes business disputes. He previously practiced at Pomerantz LLP and Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP and was recognized as a Super Lawyers^® Rising Star in 2020 and 2021. He discussed his path into securities and commercial litigation in a profile interview with Bold Journey.

More information and contact: about.me/Thomas-Przybylowski

SOURCE Thomas Przybylowski