We figured the plaintiffs firms couldn’t resist this big, fat target, and sure enough, last Thursday, Grant & Eisenhofer filed a class action complaint in state court in Houston on behalf of the Policemen and Firemen Retirement System of the City of Detroit, contending that persistent wrongdoing at KBR, abetted by Halliburton, has cost the shareholders more than $650 million. Most of the allegations of wrongdoing described in the complaint–and there are many–are drawn from news sources and from government investigations, most prominently the FCPA investigation.
We had a lot of questions to ask Eisenhofer about the case, which asserts that “the name ‘Halliburton’ has become virtually synonymous with ‘corruption,’ just as Enron became the poster child for fraud.” We also wanted to congratulate him on winning a beauty contest in late March to represent two California pension funds competing to be named lead plaintiff in the Bank of America class action (and perhaps to wheedle from him some tips on prevailing at such competitions.) We even had plans to ask Eisenhofer to offer enlightenment on the prospective success of subprime-related class actions, given plaintiffs’ lackluster results so far. Alas, he didn’t surface for an interview Friday.
