A shareholder lawsuit against JinkoSolar Holding Co will continue based on a ruling from a U.S. appeals court, according to Reuters.
The company makes solar panels and is from China. The lawsuit was filed due to claims that the company concealed the fact that one of its factories was dumping toxic waste into a river.
The ruling came from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The ruling overturned a ruling from a lower court in January of 2013. The lower court dismissed the case filed against JinkoSolar and the company’s underwriters. The lawsuit was sent back to U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken.
According to the ruling from the appeals court, the company’s failure to disclose “ongoing, serious pollution problems” in two stock offering prospectuses from 2010 “rendered misleading” statements regarding its efforts to comply with environmental laws in China.
In the May 2010 prospectus for the company’s initial public offering, JinkoSolar said that it installed equipment to lower pollution. The company also said that it hired environmental monitoring teams to make sure the company was complying with Chinese standards.
Circuit Judge Ralph Winter wrote the opinion for a three-judge 2nd Circuit panel. He said the following:
“These descriptions did not guarantee 100% compliance 100% of the time. Such compliance may often be unobtainable, and reasonable investors may be deemed to know that. However, investors would be misled … if in fact the equipment and 24-hour team were then failing to prevent substantial violations of the Chinese regulations.”