Blair Nicholas

Securities litigation didn’t take off as expected during the financial crisis and, at least according to some critics, the stock option backdating scandal mostly fizzled with a few high-profile exceptions. Yet, San Diego plaintiff lawyer Blair Nicholas was at the forefront of two major securities litigation successes in 2010, one of which involved backdating.

The backdating case, in fact, earned the biggest payout ever for that kind of class action in the Ninth Circuit and the third-largest ever in the United States, according to Nicholas, a partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. Filed in the Northern District of California, the investor action alleging improper stock option grants against Maxim Integrated Products resulted in a $173 million cash settlement. The case settled a few weeks after the SEC proved in a separate trial that former Maxim CFO Carl Jasper committed fraud and lied to auditors. Judge James Ware in San Jose approved the award against the Sunnyvale-based semiconductor company in September.