“Bounty On Directors and Officers”

According to the Recorder (via law.com), a prominent securities class action plaintiffs’ attorney stated at a recent ABA seminar that “he has been offered 50 percent of any judgment that comes directly from the pocketbooks of individual directors and officers.” Moreover, his institutional clients are committed to defending this type of fee arrangement in court.

Note, however, that this is not really a new revelation. An article in the January 2003 issue of the Corporate Legal Times (only available online via Westlaw or LexisNexis) discussed the use of premium fee arrangements to target the personal assets of alleged corporate wrongdoers under the sub-headline “Institutional Investors Place a Bounty on Directors and Officers.” Just something else to keep corporate executives up at night.