Applied Signal Technology, Inc. provides intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance products.

The original Complaint charges Applied Signal and certain of its officers and/or directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. More specifically, the Complaint alleges that the Company failed to disclose and misrepresented the following material adverse facts which were known to Defendants or recklessly disregarded by them: (1) that the Company, despite representations to the contrary, lacked the staffing necessary to execute on current projects while bidding for new business; (2) that the Company struggled to maintain adequate levels of backlog; and (3) as a consequence of the foregoing, Defendant's positive statements about managing Applied Signal's workflow and growth while maintaining the Company's profitability were lacking in all material basis when made. Further on or around February 22, 2005, Applied Signal announced its operating results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2005 ended January 28, 2005. The results were below expectations. News of this shocked the market. As a result, shares of Applied Signal fell $4.28 per share or 15.55 percent, on February 23, 2005, to close at $23.24 per share.

On July 13, 2005, the Court entered the Memorandum Opinion and Order granting the request to consolidate cases. On July 14, 2005, the Court granted the motion to appoint Frank Whiting as lead Plaintiff and approved lead Plaintiff’s selection of lead Counsel. On August 12, 2005, the lead Plaintiff filed a Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint. The Defendants responded by filing a motion to dismiss the Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint on September 14, 2005.

By the Judgment issued on February 8, 2006, pursuant to the Court's Order granting Defendants' Motion to Dismiss and dismissing Plaintiff's Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint with prejudice, it is hereby ordered that judgment is entered in favor of Defendants and against Plaintiff on all of the causes of action asserted in Plaintiff's Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint. The Clerk is directed to close the files for Case No. C 05-1027 SBA and Case No. C 05-1615 SBA and to terminate any pending matters. On March 8, 2006, the lead Plaintiff filed an appeal to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from the final judgment of the court entered in the action.

According to the docket, the United States Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's order of dismissal on June 5, 2008. In its defense, Applied Signal said the Plaintiffs had not sufficiently established that the Company had even received three of the four stopwork orders or that these orders put a stop to work accounted for in the backlog. But the appeals court rejected the argument, noting that the suit identified four employee witnesses who would testify to the existence of the disputed stopwork orders. “Defendants quibble that these witnesses weren't in a position to see the stopwork orders firsthand because they were 'engineers or technical editors' rather than managers. But any number of Company employees would be in a position to infer the issuance of stopwork orders, which would have had the very obvious effect of putting numerous employees out of work,” the appeals court said. “It's entirely plausible that 'engineers or technical editors' would know or could reasonably deduce that the company had suffered setbacks,” it added. The court also ruled that the shareholders had claimed with the proper particularity that these stopwork orders were counted as backlog, and that the Company's insistence that work may have resumed before the announcement of the backlog was a matter for a jury. So, too, was the Company's argument that reasonable investors could well understand that stopped work was included in the backlog. The Plaintiffs had also sufficiently alleged an economic loss resulting from the Company's misleading statements, Judge Kozinski said.

On April 2, 2009, the parties filed a Joint Motion for Preliminary Approval of Settlement. According to the motion, the proposed settlement is in the amount of $2,700,000.00 in cash. On May 26, 2009, Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong preliminarily approved the settlement. On August 3, 2009, the settlement hearing was held before Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, approving motion for award to lead Plaintiff and motion for attorney fees and expenses. The settlement was approved and the case is now dismissed with prejudice.