State Street Corporation's lawyers at Wilmer, Cutler, Hale, Pickering & Dorr failed to persuade a Boston federal judge to toss consolidated class actions accusing the bank of duping investors on a gigantic scale.

The HealthSouth litigation continues. On Tuesday the shareholders of HealthSouth, represented by the ubiquitous Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, announced a $109 million settlement with Ernst & Young, which was the scandal-ridden company's accountant. And more action in the case is on the way.

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.

In an unusual move, J. Crew has turned the tables on shareholders and sued them for allegedly backing out of the terms of a memorandum of understanding. In a complaint filed in Delaware Chancery Court, the company seeks to enforce the $10 million "binding agreement" that allegedly resolved shareholder charges arising from the the company's buyout by CEO Mickey Drexler and two private equity funds.

With securities arbitration awards creeping ever higher in the wake of the financial meltdown, Miller and Harris still easily cracked the top 10 with a $61 million FINRA award against Soci�t� G�n�rale on behalf of a California investment management firm.

This proposed deal comes two weeks after a federal judge signed off on a similar $90 million settlement of shareholder claims against the officers and directors of Lehman that was covered entirely by D&O insurance.

Judge Jed Rakoff almost fell off the bench when a pension fund administrator told him Coughlin Stoia monitors his fund's investments for free in order to identify potential securities cases. But is the practice in fact common in the securities class action bar?

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.

Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch has sparked 160 shareholder lawsuits. Not surprisingly, the competition for lead plaintiff and lead counsel positions is attracting some heavy hitters.