To the editor:

I appreciated the chance to speak with reporter Tony Mauro about Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta, an upcoming Supreme Court case that will be discussed at an AEI panel on Oct. 5. Unfortunately, a sentence in his Aug. 20 article [“High Court Head Count at Issue,” Page 1] incorrectly implied that I thought the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in the case was an “anti-investor ruling,” when that characterization is solely Mauro’s.

On the contrary, as I have written in The Wall Street Journal and told Mauro, I believe that the 8th Circuit’s dismissal of the case redounds to the benefit of investors in general and that the best result for investors (if not for trial lawyers) would be affirmance by the Supreme Court. And I say that even though I am a putative class member in Stoneridge.

Theodore H. Frank
Resident Fellow
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Washington, D.C.

• I'm on the front page of The American website with this piece on pro se lawsuits.
• A legnthy discussion with a Business Week reporter about how freedom of contract benefits consumers, and how limitations on freedom of contract just enrich attorneys to perform workarounds to achieve the same economic results, was distilled to a single soundbite that wasn't well-received by commenters on the website there.
• I'm scheduled to speak in Chicago September 20 on a Federalist Society panel on class action settlements. More details as they become available.