Staar Surgical settles class action suit for $7m

Staar Surgical (NSDQ:STAA) inked a $7 million deal last year to settle claims that the company misled investors regarding regulatory violations spotted by the FDA at a Monrovia, Calif.-based manufacturing facility.

The plaintiff, Edward Todd, initially alleged that Staar Surgical, ex-president & CEO Barry Caldwell, CFO Deborah Andrews and ex-CFO Stephen Brown failed to disclose problems that eventually resulted in a warning letter from the FDA in 2014.

In the May warning letter, inspectors wrote that the company was missing design files for its Visian implantable lenses and that Staar Surgical had insufficient record-keeping, lack of risk analysis documentation and poor customer complaint management.

Later that year, Todd filed a putative securities class action suit against the company and its executives in the U.S. District Court of Central California.

In October of 2014, Todd amended his complaint, reducing the alleged class period to Nov. 1, 2013 – Sept. 29, 2014 and demanding compensatory damages as well as attorneys’ fees.

Staar Surgical agreed to settle the case and in October last year, the court issued a final approval for the $7 million class action settlement deal, according to Staar Surgical’s annual report.

Also this week, Staar Surgical reported losses of $138,000, or 0¢ per share, on sales of $24.9 million for the three months ended Dec. 29. The company reeled in its losses by 17.4% while sales grew 12.3% compared with the same period last year.

Losses per share were ahead of estimates on The Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $23.9 million.

Staar Surgical posted losses of $2.1 million for the full year, or 5¢ per share, on sales of $90.6 million, seeing losses shrink by 82.4% on sales growth of 9.9% compared with the same period last year.

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