Abstract
Determining the proper class of plaintiffs that might be allowed to sue an insider trader for damages has been a very difficult task. The article will first discuss the development of three main approaches to the issue, namely the privity approach, the contemporaneous trader approach and the nondisclosure-period trader approach. This is followed by a detailed discussion of who are the individual investors specifically harmed by insider trading, since the scope of potential plaintiffs is inherently related to the issues of causation and harm. It is recommended that the nondisclosure-period trader approach properly reflects the nature of harm caused by insider trading and eliminates the uncertainty of determining who qualifies as a plaintiff. Moreover, in order to avoid potential excessive damages due to the large number of plaintiffs under this approach, caps must be provided to limit the damages to some multiple of defendant’s illicit gains, depending on how far private suits are intended to serve a deterrent
purpose.