Faruqi & Faruqi Beats Motion to Dismiss in Luminar Technologies Securities Litigation and Advances the Case to Discovery

On September 10, 2025, District Court Judge Julie S. Sneed of the Southern District of Florida denied defendants’ motion to dismiss in the putative class action securities case against Luminar Technologies, Inc. (“Luminar”) and Mike McAuliffe, the former CEO of Luminar’s semiconductor subsidiary.  In this hotly contested litigation, Lead Plaintiff alleges that Defendants misled investors during Luminar’s February 2023 Investor Day conference about its technological advances in the lidar industry by falsely passing off an image of another company’s silicon photonic integrated circuit (“PIC”) as its own. The Court had granted Defendants’ two prior motions to dismiss but granted Plaintiff leave to amend a third time.  Plaintiff did so by bolstering his allegations with additional behind-the-scenes information and with an expert’s analysis of the technological capabilities of the circuits reflected in the allegedly pilfered image and the image of Luminar’s actual circuit.

Faruqi scored an initial big win in May 2025 by defeating Defendants’ motion to strike the information provided by Plaintiff’s expert in the Third Amended Complaint. The Court held that it was appropriate to consider his analysis of the technological capabilities reflected in the images. In the September 10 Order, the Court held that “pictures can qualify as statements” and that Mr. McAuliffe could be liable under Section 10(b) as a maker of this statement during the Investor Day Presentation. The Court further agreed with Plaintiff that the complaint sufficiently alleges that the image was material to investors and that Defendants had acted with scienter.

Copies of the Court’s orders are linked below.