The mysterious case of Hewlett-Packard’s Autonomy deal

Market Watch details the H-P settlement case as it returns to court and CCAF's motion filed to diqualify the law firm working with H-P for conflict of interest.

This Monday, in Federal Court in San Francisco, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer will hear two motions challenging a recent settlement that H-P reached in June, a class action derivative lawsuit alleging that H-P directors breached their fiduciary duties in buying Autonomy and later writing off the bulk of the deal.

In addition, one of the law firms that represented the shareholders in their case against H-P directors, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP, now working with H-P, is being accused of a conflict of interest. Cotchett was previously the lead counsel in another class action against H-P. That suit, which also recently settled, alleged that the company’s inkjet printers falsely warned consumers when they were out of printer ink.

Theodore Frank, of the non-profit Center for Class Action Fairness, has filed a motion contesting the ink jet settlement, seeking to disqualify the Cotchett firm from the H-P inkjet class action settlement. “It’s just a black letter ethical violation,” Frank said in an interview.

Read the full article at Market Watch.