Investor Alert: Motley Rice reviews possible shareholder losses of Honeywell International Inc.
Motley Rice LLC, one of the nation’s largest plaintiffs’ law firms, is reviewing claims of potential losses sustained by shareholders of Honeywell International Inc. (“Honeywell” or the “Company”). Investors who purchased stock in the Company between Feb. 9, 2018 and Oct. 19, 2018 (the “Class Period”) and have suffered losses may have a claim and may be eligible to apply for appointment as Co-Lead Plaintiff in a pending federal securities class action. If you would like to discuss your potential legal options, you may contact Motley Rice securities fraud lawyers Joshua Littlejohn or Christopher Moriarty by calling either of them at 1-800-768-4026 toll free, or by emailing them.
A lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey on behalf of all who purchased Honeywell securities during the Class Period. The case, Kanefsky v. Honeywell International Inc., No. 2:18-cv-15536 (D.N.J.), was filed on Oct. 31, 2018, and is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini. On May 18, 2020, the Court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss and the case is scheduled to proceed to discovery. Due to these recent developments, interested investors who suffered losses in connection with their Class Period investments may apply to serve as a co-lead plaintiff.
The complaint alleges that during the Class Period the defendants underestimated Honeywell’s exposure to asbestos liability, particularly in connection with its acquisition of The Bendix Corporation (“Bendix”), through which Honeywell agreed to take on Bendix’s asbestos-related liabilities. Under Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) 450, a company must accrue for a loss when that loss is both probable and reasonably estimable. The complaint alleges that Honeywell did not appropriately apply the provisions of ASC 450 and, during the Class Period, made false and misleading statements or failed to disclose that (i) Honeywell’s Bendix asbestos-related liability was greater than initially reported; (ii) Honeywell maintained improper accounting practices and controls over financial reporting and public disclosures in connection with its Bendix asbestos-related liability; and (iii) as a result, certain of Honeywell’s public statements were materially false and misleading.
On Aug. 23, 2018, Honeywell filed a Form 8-K with the SEC in which it stated that it would have to “revise its accounting related to the time period associated with the determination of appropriate accruals for the legacy Bendix asbestos-related liability for unasserted claims,” and stated that its Bendix asbestos-related liability would have to be increased by $1.083 billion.
Then, on Oct. 10, 2018, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance released correspondence with Honeywell related to the Company’s accounting for Bendix asbestos-related liability, in which Honeywell acknowledged that it “had not appropriately applied the provisions of ASC 450” due to the fact that its liability estimates did not “reflect the full term of the epidemiological projections in the measurement of such liability.”
A week later, on Oct. 19, 2018, Honeywell released its quarterly report for the third quarter of 2018, in which it announced, among other things, that its revised estimate for asbestos-related liabilities was $1.09 billion higher than a prior estimate, and that the SEC’s Division of Enforcement had commenced an investigation into Honeywell’s Bendix accounting. The complaint alleges that the Company’s stock price fell, damaging investors, following each of these three disclosures.