Two contact lens companies face lawsuits over US trading

Rochester, New York-based contact lens companies CooperVision and Bausch & Lomb are the subjects of separate class action lawsuits for alleged financial misdealing.

Connecticut-based Schatz & Nobel this week announced a lawsuit on behalf of all persons who acquired Bausch & Lomb stock between January 27 and December 22, 2005.

The law firm alleged that B&L issued materially false statements and that B&L executives 'illegally reaped' over $29m in insider trading proceeds.

Meanwhile CooperVision's parent company, The Cooper Companies, is facing a similar suit for allegedly defrauding investors.

Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, a Los Angeles-based law firm, filed the suit last month alleging that company management defrauded investors through erroneous accounting and making false projections.

It also alleged that the inflated stock value was the basis for the sale of almost two million shares by some company executives, before the share price fell late last year.

It claimed that Cooper gave inflated profit forecasts, which they adjusted on November 21 last year. This resulted in a 20 per cent drop in the company's share price.

The lawsuit also accused Cooper Companies of knowledge of erroneous accounting relating to CooperVision's takeover of contact lens firm Ocular Sciences.