Did Justice Antonin Scalia intend for the U.S. to become the "Shangri-La" for worldwide securities class actions.?

Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins didn't get hired by two California pension funds in the class action against Bank of America this week, but it did win a class certification ruling in a long-running case against HealthSouth's banker, UBS, and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy.

The high court left some uncertainty about the viability of claims by U.S. shareholders who bought shares of foreign companies on foreign exchanges. The Toyota judge decided, for the purposes of picking a lead plaintiff, that only U.S.-traded securities count.

Indian business leaders who got swept up in the accounting scandal known as "India's Enron" escaped a U.S. shareholder class action this week, thanks to their lawyers at Weil Gotshal & Manges, Cooley, and Debevoise & Plimpton.

In New Jersey, a shareholder is objecting to a class settlement that gives $3.5 million to plaintiffs lawyers who challenged Merck's merger with Wyeth. But in Massachusetts, Barroway Topaz apparently improved shareholders' take in Amicas's merger by 13 percent.

In what appears to be the first decision to address a controversial interpretation of the high court's landmark securities decision, a federal judge rejected plaintiffs' arguments that investors who purchased shares abroad could still bring claims in the U.S.

The proposed settlement comes two-and-a-half months after class counsel reached a $125 million proposed settlement with Satyam for alleged accounting fraud that earned the company the nickname, "India's Enron."

Barclays has been the talk of Wall Street since Delaware Vice-Chancellor Laster excoriated the bank for allegedly double-dipping on fees in the proposed private equity takeover of Del Monte. Yet for all the scrutiny of its behavior, Barclays wasn't even a defendant in the shareholder suit to block the deal. Until now.