Unbelieveable? Read below-
May 22 -- Razorfish, Cisco, IPO suits. In a decision scathingly critical of the "lawyer-driven" nature of securities class action suits, New York federal judge Jed Rakoff rejected a motion by five law firms to install a group of investors as the lead plaintiff in shareholder lawsuits against Razorfish Inc., a Web design and consulting company. The investor group had been "cobbled together" for purposes of getting their lawyers into the driver's seat, he suggested. "Here, as in many other such cases, most of the counsel who filed the original complaints attempted before filing the instant motions to reach a private agreement as to who would be put forth as lead plaintiff and lead counsel and how fees would be divided among all such counsel." Rakoff instead installed as lead counsel Milberg Weiss and another firm, which jointly represented the largest investor claiming losses in the action. "Judge Rakoff noted drily in a footnote that numerous complaints were filed within days that essentially copied the original Milberg Weiss complaint verbatim," and wondered whether the lawyers filing those copycat suits had taken into account the requirements of federal Rule 11.
