True, Wednesday's rulings weren't all bad: Judge Jed Rakoff kept alive claims against banks involved in 19 mortgage-backed securities offerings. But plaintiffs continued their run of futility in ARS litigation and in claims against the ratings agencies.

For years U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in Manhattan has been using his power to appoint plaintiffs counsel as a means to cajole lawyers to find more women and minorities to lead class action lawsuits. Now another New York judge has followed his lead in a suit against Bayer AG.

The first time around, Andrew McCarrell won a $2.7 million verdict against the drug company, which he claimed was responsible for causing his debilitating bowel disease. Roche succeeded in overturning the verdict--only to get hit with a much, much worse result.

Yet another online privacy class action bit the dust on standing grounds on Wednesday. This time around, Google Inc. and its lawyers at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati dodged claims that Google illegally monitored users of the popular Web browsers Safari and Internet Explorer.

Aetna would be the third insurer, after Health Net and UnitedHealth, to settle claims that its out-of-network reimbursements were too low because it relied on an industry database that set "customary and reasonable" rates for medical procedures. Plaintiffs including the American Medical Association are still pursuing similar claims against Cigna and WellPoint.

Class action litigation over the catastrophic failure of the $330 billion auction-rate securities market has turned out to be a costly dead end for the plaintiffs bar. But until Monday lawyers at Girard Gibbs representing a proposed class of ARS purchasers held out hope that their claims against Merrill Lynch might be revived.