Back in May, we took a fresh look at the scorecard in the options backdating litigation, tallying up the settlements and dismissals, among other things.

It is time to update the analysis for a few reasons. One, there have been some new settlements, notably Brocade Communications which at $160 million, topped the largest prior options backdating related class action settlement, Mercury Interactive. Second, our research (and some gentle prompting from The D&O Diary) has led us to revise our count of cases.

Of the 38 options backdating cases that have been filed as securities class actions, 10 of those cases have now been dismissed and 11 have now settled.

The eleven settlements total $418 million, for an average of $38 million.

As noted earlier, these cases have settled much more quickly on average, than other cases. The eleven cases have settled in an average of 531 days. Removing the two outliers, Mercury Interactive, and Brocade, which were filed earlier and added the options backdating allegations in a later amended complaint, drops the average time from filing of initial complaint to tentative settlement for the remaining 9 cases to 439 days.

And the ratio of settlements to dismissals is somewhat out of line with historical averages as well. Most studies (and a quick check of our database) indicate that the percentage of new securities class actions that are dismissed is between 33-40 percent.

With this group of cases, we can look at the data two ways. Dismissals as a percentage of total cases or dismissals as a percentage of cases that have reached a final, or quasi-final resolution.

Under the former analysis, just over 26% of these cases have been dismissed. That number is artificially low, as not all of the cases have yet had a ruling on the motion to dismiss.

Under the latter method, 47.6% of these cases have been dismissed. This number is artificially high, as a number of these cases have already survived a motion to dismiss.

Our complete analysis can be accessed in this presentation.