Know when to fold em?
Chief Judge James M. Rosenbaum has issued a very short opinion in the UnitedHealth Group options backdating litigation, denying in full the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint.
The five page opinion describes the alleged options backdating scheme at UnitedHealth as reminiscent of the 1973 film classic, The Sting. Movie buffs will remember that in The Sting, Paul Newman and Robert Redford employed a scheme involving “past-posting,” or betting on horse races after the results are already known.
Indeed, though my tea leaf reading skills still have not been verified, the following passage should give pause to the defense attorneys in the case:
Plaintiffs’ claims are nowhere near as complex as defense counsel suggest. If plaintiffs are correct, this case is incredibly simple. Plaintiffs claim defendants were playing a game with a stacked deck. When awarded options, with deliberately selected grant dates which were already in the money, defendants were playing a game they knew they could not lose; and, unsurprisingly, defendants won.
The lead plaintiff in the UnitedHealth litigation is CalPERS and lead counsel is Lerach Coughlin Stoia, Geller Rudman & Robbins.
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June 5, 2007 |
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International Institutional Investor "Arms Race"
As recently discussed in our whitepaper, Accountability Goes Global: International Investors and U.S. Securities Class Actions, international institutional investors are becoming increasingly active in US securities class actions.
And as noted here, here, and here, one reason that may be driving the trend is the increased number of official and unofficial affiliations that American class action law firms have announced with foreign based firms.
Well yesterday Schiffrin Barroway Topaz & Kessler, LLP announced a "strategic alliance" with an Israeli based firm, Man-Barak Advocates & Solicitors.
This is at least the third formally announced relationship that Schiffrin Barroway has entered into, after the "formal cooperation" agreement that was announced last year with a German law firm, Winheller Attorneys at Law and a "cooperation" with Italian firm Studio Legale Avvocato Giuseppe L. Rosa & Consulenti Associati that was announced earlier this year.
There are of course informal relationships that exist and that careful observers will have noted. For example, nearly half of the Israeli institutional investor lead plaintiff movants identified by our whitepaper research were represented by a combination of Glancy Binkow & Goldberg LLP and Israeli attorney Jacob Sabo, though neither firm has announced an alliance or agreement.
It appears that the arms race is alive and well.
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