Law360, New York ( September 3, 2014, 10:12 AM EDT) -- Corporations facing federal securities suits can sometimes avoid liability by showing that their forward-looking statements were so vague or indefinite that they could not have affected the company's stock price, and are therefore not material. Vague, forward-looking statements like these are not actionable because courts consider them "puffing," famously described by Judge Learned Hand nearly 100 years ago as "talk which no sensible man takes seriously." Though we cannot know today what Judge Hand would think of the civil complaint recently filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against several marijuana-company stock promoters, it's safe to say that this isn't the kind of "puffing" he had in mind....