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Drugstore.com, Inc. Summary: According to the Company’s FORM 10-Q for the quarterly period ended July 2, 2006, the Company has approved a settlement agreement and related agreements, which set forth the terms of a settlement between drugstore.com, the plaintiff class and the vast majority of the other issuer defendants or, in the case of bankrupt issuers, their directors and officers. Among other provisions, the settlement agreement provides for a release of drugstore.com and the Individual Defendants for the conduct alleged in the action to be wrongful. The Company would agree to undertake certain responsibilities, including agreeing to assign away, not assert, or release certain potential claims the Company may have against its underwriters. The settlement agreement also provides a guaranteed recovery of $1 billion to the plaintiffs for the cases relating to all of the approximately 300 issuers. To the extent that the underwriter defendants settle all of the cases for at least $1 billion, no payment will be required under the issuers’ settlement agreement. To the extent that the underwriter defendants settle for less than $1 billion, the issuers are required to make up the difference. On February 15, 2005, the Court granted preliminary approval of the settlement agreement, subject to certain modifications consistent with its opinion. These modifications have been made. There is no assurance that the Court will grant final approval to the settlement.
As summarized by the same SEC filing, on and after July 6, 2001, eight stockholder class action lawsuits were filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York naming drugstore.com as a defendant, along with the underwriters and certain of our present and former officers and directors (the Individual Defendants), in its with our July 27, 1999 initial public offering and March 15, 2000 secondary offering (together, the Offerings). The complaints against drugstore.com have been consolidated into a single action and a Consolidated Amended Complaint, which is now the operative complaint, was filed on April 19, 2002. The action is being coordinated with approximately 300 other nearly identical actions filed against other companies or their former officers and directors. On July 15, 2002, the Company moved to dismiss all claims against it and the Individual Defendants. On October 9, 2002, the Court dismissed the Individual Defendants from the case without prejudice based on stipulations of dismissal filed by the plaintiffs and the Individual Defendants. On February 19, 2003, the Court denied the motion to dismiss the complaint against drugstore.com. On October 13, 2004, the Court certified a class in nine of the approximately 300 other nearly identical actions and noted that the decision is intended to provide strong guidance to all parties regarding class certification in the remaining cases. Plaintiffs have not yet moved to certify a class in our case.
The complaint alleges that defendants Drugstore.com, Inc. and certain individuals violated the federal securities laws by issuing and selling Drugstore.com common stock pursuant to the July 28, 1999 IPO without disclosing to investors that some of the underwriters in the offering, including the lead underwriters, had solicited and received excessive and undisclosed commissions from certain investors. The complaint alleges that, in exchange for the excessive commissions, members of the underwriting group Morgan Stanley & Co., Incorporated, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC allocated Drugstore.com shares to customers at the IPO price of $18.00 per share. To receive the allocations (i.e., the ability to purchase shares) at $18.00, the underwriters' brokerage customers had to agree to purchase additional shares in the aftermarket at progressively higher prices. The requirement that customers make additional purchases at progressively higher prices as the price of Drugstore.com stock rocketed upward (a practice known on Wall Street as ``laddering'') was intended to (and did) drive Drugstore.com's share price up to artificially high levels. This artificial price inflation, the complaint alleges, enabled both the underwriters and their customers to reap enormous profits by buying stock at the $18.00 IPO price and then selling it later for a profit at inflated aftermarket prices, which rose as high as $50 during its first day of trading and subsequently reached a peak price of $67.50 on August 27, 1999. Rather than allowing their customers to keep their profits from the IPO, the complaint alleges, the underwriters required their customers to ``kick back'' some of their profits in the form of secret commissions. These secret commission payments were sometimes calculated after the fact based on how much profit each investor had made from his or her IPO stock allocation. The complaint further alleges that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 because the Prospectus distributed to investors and the Registration Statement filed with the SEC in order to gain regulatory approval for the Drugstore.com offering contained material misstatements regarding the commissions that the underwriters would derive from the IPO transaction and failed to disclose the additional commissions and ``laddering'' scheme discussed above.
INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION:
SIC Code: 5912
Sector: Services
Industry: Retail (Drugs)
| COMPANY/ISSUER NAME: | Drugstore.com, Inc. |
| COMPANY/ISSUER TICKER: | DSCM |
| COMPANY WEBSITE: | http://www.drugstore.com |
| FIRST IDENTIFIED COMPLAINT IN THE DATABASE | |||||||||||||||||
| Howard M. Lasker, et al., v. Drugstore.com, et al. | |||||||||||||||||
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| DOCUMENTS FOR THE FIRST IDENTIFIED COMPLAINT | |||
| Type: | Date on the document: | ||
| REFERENCE COMPLAINT | |||||||||||||||||
| In Re Drugstore.com, Inc. Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation | |||||||||||||||||
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| DOCUMENTS FOR THE REFERENCE COMPLAINT | |||
| Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint For Violations Of The Federal Securities Laws | |||
| Type: Complaint | Date on the document: 04/19/2002 | ||
| U.S. District Court Civil Docket | |||
| Type: Docket | Date on the document: 01/20/2005 | ||
| OTHER DOCUMENTS | |||
| Case Name and/or Number: | |||
| Type: | Date on the document: | ||
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