Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. investors didn’t plead the level of intent necessary to show the company’s allegedly misleading statements about orders from the part maker’s client Boeing Co. and about its accounting controls amounted to securities fraud, a divided Tenth Circuit panel ruled.
The lower court properly dismissed the suit, Judge Robert E. Bacharach said Monday. The investors didn’t show CEO Thomas Gentile III had prior knowledge of Boeing’s impending halt in orders in the wake of two 737 MAX airliner crashes and the Federal Aviation Administration’s subsequent grounding of the planes, Bacharach said.
And they didn’t make a strong ...