Nearly three years after McDermott Will & Emery beat back an antitrust class action against international paper products company Stora Enso North America, the plaintiffs' case is back on track.

Three recent securities class action filings against nonfinancial defendants, all involving class periods that ended in 2007, led D&O Diary to wonder if plaintiffs firms were just getting to a batch of cases they'd deferred in the frenzy to file against banks. One prominent plaintiffs lawyer says no way.

A Delaware Chancery Court judge approved a shareholder settlement over Quest Diagnostics's $344 million acquisition of Celera Corp., but not before recounting the "troubling" conduct of the lead plaintiff in the Celera case and other M&A suits.

Four different plaintiffs firms filed separate suits in New York and Delaware to block Allion's private equity buyout, even though more than 99 percent of the outstanding shares voted to support the deal. After months of litigation the class actions settled--but then the plaintiffs lawyers started fighting about how to split their $1 million fee award.

Delaware Vice Chancellor Leo Strine Jr. said that the board's approval of the controversial purchase of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, as portrayed by the plaintiffs, had a "fishy smell." He refused to dismiss a derivative suit in which shareholders allege that the directors approved a sweetheart deal for Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio, who allegedly made more than half a billion dollars from the sale.

U.S. DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK [Edited for Publication] Judge Cote This Opinion considers the fairness of settlements reached this year in