Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Star Gas Partners Securities Litigation Dismissed

Today, Star Gas Partners, L.P. (NYSE: SGU) announced the dismissal of a securities class action against Star, Star's general partner, several of Star's former officers and directors and three investment banks that underwrote the public offerings of Star's common units in September 2002 and August 2003. A copy of the company's press release is available here.

The Star Gas litigation was pending in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut before Judge Janet Bond Arterton.

Judge Arterton's opinion on the motions to dismiss is available here, and her prior opinion appointing lead plaintiffs and lead counsel is available here.

John E. Wertin, RS Holdings LLC, and James Rosner are lead plaintiffs in the Star Gas litigation and Labaton Sucharow & Rudoff LLP and Schiffrin & Barroway, LLP are lead counsel. Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah, LLC is liaison counsel in the litigation.

Readers may recall that RS Holdings is also a lead plaintiff in the recently settled DHB securities litigation, discussed previously here.

Though Star Gas never put out a "vigorous defense" press release, they did indicate in the first 10-Q filed after the litigation was commenced that they "will defend against the Class Actions vigorously."

Daily Trivia: Star Gas (or its subsidiary, Petro, Inc. depending on the information source) is the nation's largest retail distributor of home heating oil.

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