Since the severe economic downturn of 2008, securities-fraud class-action suits have increased tremendously and show no signs of slowing down. Last year, UnitedHealth Group‘s massive $925.5 million dollar settlement brought the grand total to just over $3.8 billion. Laura Simmons, a Cornerstone researcher and a professor at the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, noted that settlements last year did not even account for the downturn of 2008 and are more representative of class-action suits brought between 2004 and 2006.
In 2009 the average class-action securities settlement was $39 million, up from $28 million in 2008, according to the Cornerstone study.
A majority of these suits included purported violations of widely agreed upon accounting practices. Twenty six percent of the class-action securities-fraud plaintiffs were represented by San Diego firm, Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, during the last 2 years. It was Coughlin who took on the UnitedHeath case. UnitedHeath was accused of secretly giving backdated stock options to executives.
Posted by joshua
on March 24, 2010. Filed under Home,Law Firm News,Legal News.
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