Chester,
I hope that this was said tongue-in-cheek. Lawyers don't represent investors, they only represent themselves. If they smell money, they attack - no different than their more evolved cousin - the shark. The investors who lost money due to fraud have lost their money and that is the end. When the lawyers come in to kill the corporation "on behalf of the shareholders" they are in fact suing the shareholders - that's the definition of a corporation.
Once the lawsuit has begun, the lawyers have already won. The slight of hand is that the shareholders are lead to believe in "justice" being served - perhaps some naive image of the wrongdoers behind bars. The lawyers perpetuate this myth with rhetoric about the "Good of the shareholders..." In fact, the primary objective of these lawyers in class action suits is to rack up huge numbers of billable hours that are then deducted from any monies left in the corporation at the successful completion of the lawsuit. What is left over (and they make sure that there isn't any money left over) is then distributed to those "poor unfortunate shareholders" at pennies on the dollar - if anything at all.
Find a company like Zonagen that has an attractive balance sheet (cash for R&D or Marketing) and you'll find a lawyer circling overhead waiting for the smallest stumble, the slightest shade of impropriety.
This is not conjecture - it's experience. These guys are the ambulance chasers of the security industry. I'm not saying Zonagen is innocent. I believe that they did misrepresent the facts. If proven to be true, that constitutes fraud. And, yes, I am a shareholder in Zonagen with huge losses on paper. Do I want the company (myself) to be sued by lawyers? No. I want that money (my money) plowed into bringing product to market so that I can recover my losses with profits and increased share prices.
If you still don't believe me, try, if you can, to imagine the lawyer who successfully wins such a suit and says: "No, no. I'll take my fees AFTER all of the shareholders have been reimbursed the full amount of the money that they lost - it's them that I am really concerned about."
See what I mean? |
