Easterbrook Strikes Again, Slamming Flimsy Derivative Suit

Forbes reports on Ted Frank's victory in another objection to a settlement which benefited the plaintiff's attorney's to the detriment of their clients.

Ted Frank of the Center for Class Action Fairness has won another challenge to a settlement that would have benefited lawyers at the expense of their purported clients, investors. In his typical tart language, Judge Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit that accused Sears of risking an antitrust suit by keeping on its board two directors who worked at competing retail companies.

A trial-court judge approved the settlement and refused to allow Frank to intervene, saying the investors who led the suit were adequate representatives of the class. Easterbrook rejected that, saying the settlement actually would hurt shareholders by depriving them of the cash paid to the lawyers as well as one of their elected directors. The entire premise of the lawsuit was bunk, Easterbrook said, since there was virtually no chance the government would sue the company for antitrust before first asking the directors to step down voluntarily.

Read the full article at Forbes.