“Foreign-cubed” is the name of the latest legal nemesis that keeps lawyers for companies ranging from Toyota to Vivendi up at night.

The term refers to securities class action litigation in which the investors are foreign, the issuers are foreign and the fraudulent conduct took place on foreign soil. And yet, because of some company tie to the United States, large or minuscule, they end up in U.S. courts, where plaintiffs usually can do a lot better than if the suits were filed abroad.