Six lawsuits filed in a Manhattan federal court by shareholders
of Amazon.com, AOL Time Warner and eBay against US securities firm
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and its high profile internet analyst
Mary Meeker have been dismissed by a federal judge in
Manhattan.
The lawsuits alleged that Mary Meeker issued overly optimistic
stock evaluations and biased investment advice about internet
companies during the tech-stock boom period, for personal gain and
for the profit of her firm.
US District Judge Milton Pollack labelled the allegations
contained within the lawsuits as “gross and unrestrained” and said
they were filled with mere “market gossip” which amounted to
“abusive litigation.” He gave the parties bringing the cases a
period of 30 days to file an amended complaint if they wish to
raise any “proper allegations”. The judge described one of the
lawsuits as “hopelessly redundant, argumentative,” adding that it
had “much irrelevancy and inflammatory material”.
Similar lawsuits have been filed against many of the major
securities firms. Last month, Merrill Lynch paid $400,000 to settle
a lawsuit which also alleged that an analyst had misled investors
over internet stocks.
