August 09, 2004

The total in settlements dipped last year for the first time in a long while (to $2 billion), but the latest Stanford Law School/Cornerstone Research study on volume of securities litigation otherwise confirms many widely noted observations and trends: the size of settlements keeps rising; the plaintiff's bar has adapted to the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act by coordinating its activities with big public pension funds and other institutional investors, in line with the act's intentions; Milberg Weiss and its offshoot Lerach Coughlin have if anything expanded their dominance; and suits that survive the motion to dismiss/summary judgment stage are highly likely to be settled for substantial sums. (Michael Bobelian, "Drop Seen in Settlement Totals for Securities Class Actions", New York Law Journal, May 13).