A preliminary settlement of the proposed class action lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in San Diego, where TuSimple is based, and is subject to judge approval.
All defendants, including the company, various founders and executives of TuSimple, and the banks acting as lead managers for TuSimple, denied any wrongdoing by agreeing to a settlement.
According to court documents, TuSimple deposited $174 million of the settlement amount into a trust account, while its insurers paid $15 million into it.
The company was delisted from Nasdaq in January, less than three years after raising $1.35 billion in an IPO in April 2021.
TuSimple’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Shareholders accused the company of making false statements about the safety of its technology before its IPO in order to fix problems on U.S. roads and transfer the improved technology to Chinese competitor Hydron.
They said the truth emerged in August 2022, when The Wall Street Journal reported that a highway crash in Arizona four months earlier underscored concerns among analysts and employees that TuSimple was endangering public safety in its rush to deliver self-driving trucks.
The shareholders’ lawyers can demand up to 25 percent of the settlement amount, or around $47 million, for legal fees.
TuSimple went public at a price of $40 per share. The shares were unchanged at 20 cents in over-the-counter trading on the Pink Sheets on Tuesday afternoon.
The case is Dicker et al. v. TuSimple Holdings Inc. et al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, No. 22-01300.
Sign up Here.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel from New York
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
