The financial crisis has prompted a surge in class-action securities lawsuits—although the surge seems largely confined to businesses in the financial services sector for now.
Two widely respected scorekeepers—NERA Economic Consulting and Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse—say the number of such lawsuits filed last year was up sharply from 2007 and earlier in the decade. NERA counts 255 lawsuits filed in 2008, up 37 percent from the year before; Stanford is counting 210, a jump of 19 percent. And both say nearly half the lawsuits are related to players in the financial crisis.
