Litigation

Apple backdating litigation update

By Ted Frank

Larry Ribstein writes:

Consider the recent endgame in the Apple backdating litigation. The lawyers did come up with $16.5 million settlement. But, as if to demonstrate that fiduciary problems are everywhere, the settlement diverted $2.5 million to "corporate governance" programs of three [sic] law schools. Two of the schools were affiliated with lead plaintiffs' lawyers. Beyond that, one wonders what effect the money would have on the schools' teaching and research about litigation's role in corporate governance.

Ted Frank's Center for Class Action Fairness has embarrassed the parties into at least giving Apple shareholders an opportunity to get that money, and is now asking for a guarantee that the shareholders will get the entire settlement.

Harvard Law, Columbia Law, and the University of Delaware are each out $208,333; nine other schools are still in the hunt for shareholder money, including San Diego State, which, as Lyle Roberts amusingly points out, issued a press release counting their pre-hatched chickens. See also CCAF (with links to briefs); Stoll; CNBC; earlier on POL. I still have to wonder why, if the corporate governance programs knew about the diversion of shareholder money, it fell to me to say something about it. (The Center for Class Action Fairness is not affiliated with the Manhattan Institute.) The settling parties do want you to know, however, that though they entirely capitulated on one element of my conflict-of-interest complaint, they "found it to be without merit."

In other Ted Frank news, I'm on the front page of trial-lawyer advertising site "Lawyers and Settlements" for an interview calling me a "Modern Day Robin Hood" that even spells my name right most of the time.

Full post as published by Point of Law on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).