Asbestos plaintiffs who settled with Pfizer would have received payments contingent on the approval of a reorganization plan, which gave them an incentive to vote for the plan. That didn't sit well with Manhattan bankruptcy judge Stuart Bernstein.

The $40 million wage-and-hour settlement Wal-Mart agreed to Wednesday is vindication for a lawyer who said she could do better for the class than her predecessor, famed plaintiffs lawyer Fred Furth.

It was inevitable that the collapse of the $300 billion auction-rate securities market in 2008 would trigger securities litigation. But the ARS freeze also spawned a massive antitrust case, after a trio of plaintiffs firms cooked up a theory that the market's demise was triggered by an illegal boycott on the part of major banks.