The securities class action efforts led by Belmont Holdings have so far yielded little.
FORBES: The Prominent Philadelphia Businessman Working With Plaintiff Lawyers Against Big Banks
The settlement, according to plaintiffs attorneys, is one of the top 25 securities class action settlements of all time.
FORBES: Merck To Pay $688 Million To Shareholders For Delaying Vytorin Results
Outside board members are rarely named in either securities class action lawsuits or Securities and Exchange Commission actions over disclosures.
FORBES: PwC Will Answer For Centro But Judge Slams Directors First
One of them relates how he was approached by a securities class action lawyer when he was teaching at the University of Chicago.
FORBES: The U.S. Legal System: Good At Some Things, Wretched At Others
In Mississippi, the state attorney general determines when the public employees retirement fund should bring a securities class action and which outside firms will represent the fund.
It also found 67 securities class action suits were filed in Q1 2009, up from 53 cases the previous quarter, and 56 suits filed a year earlier.
"There's little if any evidence that they try to negotiate a better price, " says Joseph Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School who runs the Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse.
"A large part of the recent boom in litigation has been driven by lawsuits against financial institutions, " says Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford Law professor and director of the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse.
As a result of the PSLRA, today securities class action firms (in order to secure lucrative lead counsel fees) must persuade pensions to serve as lead plaintiffs in cases the firms seek to bring.
However, when these securities class action law firms pay lawyers who represent pensions hefty referral fees (which may or may not be disclosed to the fund-client) that DOES raise some very serious ethical and possibly legal issues.
This is a little naive given that the modern securities class action is mainly an exercise in getting a case past the motion to dismiss and only a handful of cases have every gone before a jury.
The report was released by New York law firm Labaton Sucharow, which specializes in representing plaintiffs in securities class action cases and whistleblower actions, together with HedgeWorld, a news and research service, and the Hedge Fund Association, a trade group.
FORBES: Corruption at Hedge Funds Even More Rampant Than You Think, Study Shows
Since virtually every securities class action settles after surviving a motion to dismiss, the risk of non-payment is presumably much lower for plaintiff attorneys and courts might consider lowering or eliminating the multiplier on billable hours the firms rack up after that.
FORBES: Corporate Lawyers Scratch Their Heads Over Citi Class-Action Fees
Even before the current crisis, the number of securities class-action suits filed during the first half of the year rose by more than 100% over the same period for the preceding year, according to a recent report by Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse.
Since February 2007, 69 securities class action lawsuits have been filed related to the subprime meltdown, including 11 brought by investors in auction-rate securities, two by investors in bond funds that had losses, and two against investment banks for their hand in creating the structured product market.
That is the conclusion of Joseph Grundfest, a securities class-action expert, professor of law and business at Stanford Law School and former commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The top securities class-action firms are sprinkled with former assistant attorneys general and other government attorneys.
FORBES: State Lawyers Find New Berths At Outside Firms They Used To Oversee
Cordray was wildly popular with one well-heeled segment of the financial industry, however: Securities class-action lawyers.
FORBES: Nominee Cordray Had Solid Backing From Securities Lawyers
For the securities class-action business, the knock-on effect is that the number of suits filed has dropped precipitously.
In securities class-action suits, however, the gains are proportional to share ownership.
On Feb. 21, Mr. Hood hired the firm to represent the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System in a securities-class action against Delphi Corp.
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Washington sanctioned lawyers at Robbins Geller, one of the most prominent securities class-action firms, over what he considered padded expenses.
FORBES: How Many Law Firms Does It Take To Sue An Egg Company? 34, Apparently
What she found would look quite familiar to anybody involved in the securities class-action business: A small group of specialized players who engage in repeated rounds of the same game.
FORBES: Study Of "Settlement Mills" Shows Insurers Like Them
Securities class-action suits can drag on for several years.
WSJ: Facebook Faces Lawsuits, Arbitration Over Its Initial Public Offering
Securities class-action lawyers are frequently criticized for settling their cases for a small fraction of the losses, although Lerach and other firms have won multibillion-dollar settlements recently in cases such as WorldCom.
Milberg Weiss, a law firm, said new charges were being brought against it and Melvyn Weiss , its co-founder, in a federal investigation into alleged kickbacks paid to plaintiffs in securities class-action lawsuits.
Type securities fraud class action into the popular AltaVista search engine and the third item on the screen is the Web site address for Milberg, Weiss, the law firm of strike-suit king William Lerach.
Not pension officials, to be sure, but we here at Forbes have documented a pervasive culture of pay-to-play in the securities class-action bar, in which lawyers wine and dine union and government pension officials to get in on obscenely lucrative business of settling securities lawsuits.
FORBES: Lerach Blames Pension Woes On Pay-To-Play -- Theirs, Not His
John Kennedy, the state treasurer who helps decide when Louisiana's major pension funds should bring a law suit, has received tens of thousands of dollars in political donations from Bernstein Litowitz, which has offices in New York, New Orleans and San Diego and was the country's top-grossing securities class-action firm in 2008.
Finally, a federal judge has done her job and closely examined the pleadings it a securities-fraud class action.
FORBES: Federal Judge, In Stunning Development, Slaps Securities Lawyers With Sanctions
应用推荐