| Court: | United States District Court for the Northern District of California |
| Case Number: | 4:21-cv-03343-JST |
| Class Period: | 11/26/2019 - 05/06/2021 |
| Case Leaders: | Salvatore J. Graziano, Jonathan D. Uslaner, Jorge G. Tenreiro |
| Case Team: | Shane Avidan, Jim Briggs |
This is a securities fraud class action on behalf of persons who purchased or otherwise acquired the common stock of ChemoCentryx, Inc. (“ChemoCentryx” or the “Company”) between November 26, 2019 and May 6, 2021, inclusive (the “Class Period”), and were damaged thereby.
Lead Plaintiff Has Reached a Proposed Settlement of the Action for $69 Million
Lead Plaintiff Indiana Public Retirement System, on behalf of itself and the Class, has reached a proposed settlement of the Action for $69,000,000 in cash that, if approved, will resolve the Action (the “Settlement”).
If you are a member of the Class, your rights will be affected and you may be eligible for a payment from the Settlement. The Class consists of:
all persons who purchased or otherwise acquired the common stock of ChemoCentryx between November 26, 2019, and May 6, 2021, inclusive, and were damaged thereby
Certain persons and entities are excluded from the Class by definition (see paragraph 28 of the Settlement Notice).
Please read the Settlement Notice to fully understand your rights and options. Copies of the Settlement Notice and Claim Form can be found in the Case Documents list on the right of this page. You may also visit the case website, www.ChemoCentryxSecuritiesLitigation.com, for more information about the Settlement and the litigation.
To be eligible to receive a payment under the proposed Settlement, you must submit a Claim Form postmarked (if mailed) or submitted on-line by no later than October 1, 2026.
Payments to eligible claimants will be made only if the Court approves the Settlement and a plan of allocation, and only after any appeals are resolved, and after the completion of all claims processing. Please be patient, as this process will take some time to complete.
IMPORTANT DATES AND DEADLINES
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October 1, 2026 |
Claim Filing Deadline. Claim Forms must be postmarked (if mailed) or submitted on-line no later than October 1, 2026. |
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September 21, 2026 |
Objection Deadline. Any objection to the proposed Settlement, the proposed Plan of Allocation, or the motion for attorneys’ fees and expenses, must be submitted so it is filed or postmarked no later than September 21, 2026, in accordance with the instructions in the Notice. |
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October 22, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time |
Settlement Hearing. The Settlement Hearing will be held on October 22, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time, before the Honorable Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California by Zoom videoconference. The Settlement Hearing will be held by the Court to consider, among other things, whether the proposed Settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate and should be approved; whether the proposed Plan of Allocation is fair and reasonable and should be approved; and whether Lead Counsel’s motion for attorneys’ fees and expenses should be approved. Information on how to attend the Zoom videoconference is available at https://cand.uscourts.gov/judges/tigar-jon-s-jst/. |
Background and History of the Litigation
This case arises from alleged false and misleading statements and omissions made by ChemoCentryx and its CEO, Defendant Thomas J. Schall, about the safety, efficacy, and application for FDA approval of the Company’s single most important product: a proprietary vasculitis drug called avacopan. Current “standard of care” treatment for vasculitis, a rare immune disease, includes substantial steroid dosing, which, while effective, is associated with meaningful safety risks. Defendants hailed avacopan as a far safer replacement for steroid-based therapy – a drug that would “change the treatment paradigm” for vasculitis by “mak[ing] steroids and their noxious side effects irrelevant.” As Defendants told investors, avacopan was poised to become the new, safer standard of vasculitis care, giving the drug “multi-billion dollar market potential.”
Throughout the Class Period, Defendants touted the results of ChemoCentryx’s ADVOCATE study, the Company’s key clinical trial of avacopan and the basis for its approval application to the FDA. Defendants told investors that the ADVOCATE results confirmed avacopan’s core value proposition and demonstrated that the drug was far safer, but no less effective, than steroid-based therapy. Further, Defendants told investors that “all” of the Company’s interactions with the FDA in connection with its New Drug Application (“NDA”) for avacopan, which was built on the ADVOCATE data, had been “straightforward and routine” and that the agency had raised no serious or unexpected issues that might jeopardize approval with the broad label ChemoCentryx sought.
On May 4 and 6, 2021, in connection with a meeting of outside experts convened by the FDA to review the avacopan NDA, the FDA disclosed numerous “uncertainties about the interpretability of [the ADVOCATE] data and the clinical meaningfulness of these results,” and also revealed that “during the avacopan clinical development, including the phase 3 design stages, the Agency communicated many of the [same] concerns” directly to ChemoCentryx. In response to this news, ChemoCentryx stock dropped by more than 80%.
On January 28, 2022, the Honorable Jon S. Tigar appointed Indiana Public Retirement System as Lead Plaintiff and BLB&G as Lead Counsel for the potential Class. On March 28, 2022, Lead Plaintiff filed the Amended Consolidated Class Action Complaint, which can be found in the Case Documents section immediately to the right of this description. Defendants moved to dismiss the Complaint on May 19, 2022. Lead Plaintiff opposed the motion on July 1, 2022, and Defendants filed their reply on August 12, 2022. On February 23, 2023, the Court issued an order denying the motion to dismiss, which also can be found in the Case Documents section of this page.
Defendants filed their answer to the Complaint on April 27, 2023. After full briefing and a hearing, on March 6, 2024, Judge Tigar issued his decision, which can be found in the Case Documents section of this page, granting in full Lead Plaintiff’s motion to certify the class. On March 22, 2024, Defendants filed a petition for permission to appeal Judge Tigar’s class certification decision to the Ninth Circuit, which the Ninth Circuit denied on May 24, 2024.
Beginning on November 13, 2024, the Notice of Pendency of Class Action (“Class Notice”) was mailed to 35,220 potential Class Members. The Class Notice provided Class Members with the opportunity to request exclusion from the Class, explained that right, and set forth the deadline for doing so (January 14, 2025). The Class Notice informed Class Members that if they chose to remain a member of the Class, they would “be legally bound by all determinations, orders, and judgments that the Court makes in the Action, whether favorable or unfavorable.”
During discovery in the Action, Defendants produced approximately 7.8 million pages of documents and dozens of third parties (including the FDA, Amgen, and ChemoCentryx’s consultants, bankers, and former employees) produced tens of thousands of additional pages of documents. The Parties conducted 21 depositions of fact witnesses and 17 depositions of expert witnesses; and prepared and exchanged 24 expert reports.
On February 13, 2025, Class Representative and Defendants filed a total of 11 motions to exclude portions of expert testimony offered by the adverse party. The Court heard oral argument on April 10, 2025 and decided those motions on May 21, 2025.
Class Representative filed a motion for partial summary judgment on May 8, 2025, and Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on May 29, 2025. The Court heard oral argument on those motions on August 7, 2025.
On August 15, 2025, the Court issued an Order granting Defendants’ motion for summary judgment and denying Class Representative’s motion as moot. On the same day, the Court issued its Judgment dismissing the Action.
On September 12, 2025, Lead Plaintiff appealed the Court’s Order Granting Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment and the Judgment to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On January 5, 2026, Class Representative filed its opening brief in support of its appeal.
On January 26, 2026, while Lead Plaintiff’s appeal was pending, the Parties executed a Memorandum of Understanding reflecting an agreement in principle to settle all claims in this Action in return for a cash payment of $35,000,000 for the benefit of the Class.
On April 27, 2026, after the filing of Lead Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary approval of the original settlement, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (“CDER”) of the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) filed a public notice proposing the withdrawal of TAVNEOS (avacopan). Following CDER’s announcement, the Parties engaged in further negotiations culminating in a revised agreement to settle all claims in this Action in return for a cash payment of $69,000,000 for the benefit of the Class.
On May 15, 2026, the Parties entered into the Revised Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement (the “Stipulation”), which sets forth the full terms and conditions of the $69,000,000 Settlement. The Stipulation can be found in the Case Documents section of this page.
On June 12, 2026, the Court preliminarily approved the Settlement, authorized notice of the Settlement to be disseminated to potential Class Members, and scheduled the Settlement Hearing to consider whether to grant final approval to the Settlement for October 22, 2026.