Motorola hit with class-action stock suit

A Florida firefighters' pension group hit Motorola with a class-action suit in U.S. District Court Thursday accusing the Schaumburg-based electronics giant of falsely inflating its stock price at the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008.

The suit, filed in the Northern District of Illinois by the St. Lucie County Fire District Firefighters' Pension Trust Fund, accused Motorola executives of fraud in making "false and misleading public statements" about the company's business.

Specifically, the suit cited Motorola executives insisting the company was robust and that "they had finally turned a corner" after brief market setbacks for its RAZR phone series toward the end of 2007.

"Yet secretly," the suit alleged, "defendants knew that in reality the company had already irreparably lost significant market share to the Apple, Inc., iPhone and other smartphone devices."

The suit charged that Motorola was "aggressively" buying its own stock to buttress its price, but did not reveal how tough things were until a fourth-quarter earnings report released Jan. 23, 2008, when the stock price plummeted.

The suit is a class action for those who bought Motorola stock from Dec. 6, 2007, through Jan. 22, 2008.

The suit named Motorola and executives Edward Zander, Gregory Brown and Thomas Meredith.