Cornerstone Propane Partners LP ("Cornerstone or the Company) distributes petroleum and petroleum products.

The Complaint charges CornerStone and certain of its officers and directors with violations of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder. Throughout the Class Period, Defendants issued a series of material misrepresentations to the market between November 2, 1999, and February 11, 2003, which served to artificially inflate the price of Cornerstone securities. Specifically, the Complaint alleges that during the Class Period, the Partnership was faced with the crisis of having to renegotiate its capital credit lending agreements, which were set to expire on November 30, 2001. Faced with this situation of needing to obtain capital credit or face liquidation, the Partnership issued statements that failed to disclose and/or misrepresented the following adverse facts, among others: (1) that the Partnership had materially overstated its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"), net income and earnings per unit; (2) that the Partnership lacked adequate internal controls and was therefore unable to ascertain the true financial condition of the Partnership; and (3) that as a result, the value of the Partnership's EBITDA, net income and financial results were materially overstated at all relevant times. On February 11, 2003, the Partnership revealed in its 8-K filed with SEC that it had to restate its financial results for fiscal years 2000 and 2001 due to the Partnership's knowledge of known errors in reporting its financial results for fiscal years 2000 and 2001. In response to this announcement, the price of Cornerstone securities declined precipitously.

According to a press release dated May 11, 2006, the Plaintiffs in the case moved for certification of a class defined in the Complaint as "all persons and entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Cornerstone common units between July 29, 1998 and February 11, 2003..." The Defendants challenged class certification, in part, on the grounds that the definition of the class improperly included shareholders who sold their shares prior to an alleged corrective disclosure. These shareholders, [Cooley Godward Palo Alto-based litigation partner Grant] Fondo argued, could not have been injured because they sold their stock before the market was informed of the alleged misrepresentation and subsequent stock drop and, therefore, could not have been injured by the alleged misrepresentation. The Court agreed: "Defendants are correct in their assertion that plaintiffs who sold their stock before July 27, 2001, when the first corrective disclosure occurred, did not suffer any loss causally related to defendants' alleged misrepresentations." Therefore, the Court excluded from the class all shareholders who sold their stock during the three-year period prior to the first alleged corrective disclosure, which the court found to be July 27, 2001.

On September 19, 2006, the parties agreed on a settlement of $13,500,000. On July 23, 2007, a Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement was filed, and the settlement was preliminarily approved on September 11, 2007. On December 12, 2007, the settlement was approved when U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel signed the Final Order and Judgment.