Most of the world's most powerful private equity firms must face an investor class action alleging that they conspired to drive down buy-out prices for publicly traded companies, a federal judge in Boston ruled Thursday.

Many of the Fairfield defendants argued in a motion to dismiss that they were also duped by Bernie Madoff, and lost money of their own. But Judge Victor Marrero found the feeder funds' fees may well have led Fairfield to "turn a blind eye" to Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

Manhattan federal district court judge Lewis Kaplan is tossing out Lehman cases as if they were old shoes. Last week it was the ratings agency case; this week it's an ERISA class action.

With the credit crisis fading into the distance, the flood of suits against Chinese reverse merger companies drying up, and the courts erecting barriers left and right, securities plaintiffs lawyers may be struggling to find new targets.

The decision revives Global Reinsurance's allegations that Equitas, created in the Lloyd's restructuring of 1996, has taken advantage of its vast power in the reinsurance marketplace.

Morgan Lewis & Bockius client ActiveVideo prevailed in a three-week patent infringement trial, but there's another beneficiary too: ActiveVideo client Cablevision, which continues to battle Verizon over related patents at the ITC.

In case you were worried that the judge who won't sign off on the bank's proposed $33 million settlement with the SEC is allergic to all BofA deals, here's proof he isn't. This week Rakoff gave the green light to the $150 million securities class action settlement of a case BofA inherited when it acquired Merrill Lynch.

Citing Lehman's infamous Repo 105 balance transfers, federal district court Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that most of the claims in the mammoth Manhattan securities class action against Lehman's directors, officers, auditor, and underwriters could move forward.