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.