“Get professional help,” is the message of a shareholder suit filed in Hartford Superior Court against foundering Aetna, Inc. shortly before its annual meeting last Friday morning.

The complaint was filed on March 10 by Hartford’s Eliot B. Gersten, of Gersten & Clifford, with three New York firms as counsel. In its substantive charges, the class action bid asserts that the members of the board of directors “are unlawfully seeking to entrench themselves in their own positions at the expense of the public stockholders.”