A Welcome Addition to the Press Release Universe

The vast majority of press releases that we have discussed relate to events at the inception of securities litigation.

This press release, issued by Plaintiff's counsel in the KPNQwest securities litigation comes at the end of the case. It is a copy of the summary notice of several proposed partial settlements valued at a total of $15,175,000. The same notice was published today in The Wall Street Journal.

Time to climb onto the soapbox...

The WSJ notice was in the so-called "tombstone format" that is typically used to announce securities litigation settlements. While this type of notice has routinely been found to be an acceptable part of an overall notice campaign, I applaud plaintiff's counsel in this case for taking the extra step to broadcast the notice over one of the national business wires.

As many commentators (and this author, here) have noted, investors routinely fail to file claims forms in securities class actions. Any action that increases the percentage of investors that are able to recover losses in a given securities class action is a positive development. And as researchers have noted for years, investors use the Internet to track their investments, and are thus potentially far more likely to see a notice on their financial website of choice than in a print only format.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled post...

KPNQwest N.V. was jointly owned by Dutch telecom operator Koninklijke KPN N.V. (Royal KPN N.V.) and the Denver based "Baby Bell", Qwest Communications International Inc. KPNQwest filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, one of the many telecoms that failed after the dot-com and telecom bubbles burst.

Lead counsel in the KPNQwest litigation are Schiffrin & Barroway, LLP and Glancy Binkow & Goldberg LLP, while Kirby McInerney & Squire, LLP is liaison counsel. The case is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York before Judge Peter K. Leisure.

A copy of the second amended complaint is available from Stanford here.

Thanks to Kevin LaCroix author of The D&O Diary for sending in the press release.

Daily Trivia: At the time of its bankruptcy filing, KPNQwest carried more than 25% of Europe's internet traffic.