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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mr.mark who wrote (45010)	12/10/2000 2:42:33 PM
From: David E. Taylor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

Mark: The 700 shares you purchased in May 1997 and didn't sell until after 11/5/97 certainly qualify. If you sold those shares before 2/3/98 you're in category (2), if you sold them after 2/3/98 you're in category (3). Either way, the most you'll get is $5.67/share. That's almost $4000, certainly worth filing the claim for, unless of course your original purchase price in May 1997 minus your eventual sales price (i.e. your net trade loss) turns out to be much less than $5.67, which it might if you bought early in May 1997 when COMS was down around $35. If you bought additional shares after May 1997 but before 11/3/97 (and held them), they qualify as well. Any shares bought after 11/3/97 don't count. One additional factor in this is that if you bought and sold shares within the 4/23/97 to 11/3/97 time window and made a profit on that trade, the profits will deducted from any loss you you incurred on other qualifying shares. I personally had three sets of shares in the time period in question: (1) A large bunch of USRX that I bought in April when USRX/COMS tanked and COMS got down to around $20. I sold those shares in June after they converted into COMS and made a healthy profit. Fortunately, since USRX to COMS converted shares don't qualify, I can ignore them and the profits I made on the trades. (2) Another somewhat smaller bunch of COMS I bought in late June and sold in July for another decent profit. Those profits count against my net losses. (3) Emboldened by (1) and (2), I foolishly bought a large pile of COMS in August, added another large pile in September (ignoring all the warning signs that COMS was in trouble), and eventually gave up on the entire holding in December. The resultant losses overwhelmed the gains from (2) so I'll get the max from the settlement, whatever it turns out to be. Right now they have the max pegged at $5.67/share, but that could change depending on the number of claims, $$/claim paid out, and how much the lawyers manage to syphon off for themselves - right now they're asking for 25% ($64.75 million) plus $1.75 million in expenses, which they say is "reasonable" considering all the hard work they put in. Let's see, if we grant them $500/hour for their legal expertise, that's around 130,000 lawyer-hours, or over 20 lawyers working flat out for the last 3 years on just this case. What a joke, they're as bad as the ambulance chasing personal injury lawyers. They should be required by the court to submit their actual hours and expenses, and they should be given their normal hourly billing rate plus a nice 100% bonus for winning. That would give each of the 6 law firms around $2 million each at most, more than ample reward IMO. But I have no say in how much they take, unfortunately. If I want to object, I have to file with the court for permission to appear at the hearing, notify all six law firms, etc. etc. Not worth the trouble, plus I may get excluded from the settlement disbursement. David T.