"Evidence"? I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I can tell you first hand (lit support work) and second-hand (friends and families work for some of the firms specializing in these things, that not one of the cases I saw ever returned anything significant to shareholders...literally pennies, if anything. (How about cases where settlements have mandated sending out checks that cost more to produce than their value).
I believe about half of my long positions have been subjected to these attacks over the last year (I tend to bottom feed), although I honestly don't know whether I am a potential class member or not - I ignore these nuisance suits, and that is exactly what they are, and I encourage others to do the same.
These things are about as abusive as you can imagine without being illegal, themselves. They can be, however, a significant distraction to management and a drain of resources. I've never seen anything that amounted to criminal conduct or real fraud...at most I've seen a lot of stupid and careless activity. For real fraud or criminal activity, we have different legal recourse, anyway.
The real question is do you want to punish a company for mistakes (really the shareholders) by transferring wealth to lawyers and consultants (oh, yes, they'll generously share those pennies with some of the shareholders - usually the stupid ones who buy the stock at inflated stocks). Frequently these mistakes wouldn't create liability, but are embarassing if disclosed...and the legal clock keeps ticking...
I do find these disgusting (but, hey, I'm as big a whore as anyone). They are generally an exercise in seeing how much you can convince the company to pay you to go away and stop issuing press releases (these rarely even get to arbitration).
What is more disturbuing, though this I cannot confirm, are allegations of improper dealings (on the short side) by some of the participants of these suits and improper relationships with certain portfolio managers. I cannot confirm these, but share a certain suspicion. Perhaps you would know more here. |
