It is now a commonplace for publicly traded corporations to include in their regulatory filings, annual reports, and assorted communiques so-called "aspirational statements," proclamations memorializing the company's deep commitment to transacting business with honesty and integrity, while observing the highest ethics. While critics deride the practice as, at best, merely stating the obvious, and, at worse, disingenuous self-congratulation (and they might have a point), most do no more than mildly applaud such public declarations of fealty to good corporate citizenship.

But such utterances are not without a cost. As previously exposited by this writer, see Sabino, "#MeToo and Securities Fraud: Lessons from the CBS Case," 263 New York Law Journal p.4, cl.4 (June 3, 2020), any revelations that the corporation has failed to live up to its high minded ideals is typically accompanied by harsh consequences, ranging from the reshuffling of upper management to reputational harm to an ensuing loss of business. The last mentioned almost inevitably leads to class action lawsuits brought by aggrieved shareholders who, in truth, suffer the most when, as a consequence of such duplicity, the corporation's share price declines. This is especially so when it is alleged that the malefactor promulgated these aspirational statements as a means to maintain its share price at artificially high levels, a species of federal securities fraud known as "inflation-maintenance."