Some interesting new figures following the decision of the three-judge panel with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to block the $40 billion investor class action against Enron.

The data suggests that payouts from securities class actions peaked last year in a Landslide of big settlements but they are now likely to go down.

The Cornerstone Research study found that the total value of settled cases in 2006 grew to $10.6 billion, compared with the 2005 $3.5 billion total. That's up more than 300 percent in what was a record-breaking year.

The increase, however, was due to the size of the payouts rather than the number of cases settled. That's partly due to four mega-settlements in excess of $1 billion, not including the $7 billlion-plus Enron payout, but even without these, the average settlement was still higher. The five $1 billion-plus settlements were part of a larger group of 14 cases that settled for payouts of $100 million or more.

Accounting issues were at the centre of 55 per cent of all cases, and 35 per cent involved restatements. The figures also show that institutions with deep pockets are playing a bigger role. They were the lead plaintiffs in over 50 per cent of cases.

Stanford Law School Professor and former SEC commissioner Joseph Grundfest, Director of the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which is sponsored by Cornerstone, said the numbers will now go down.

"With the largest part of the WorldCom and Enron settlements now wrapped up, and with fewer huge pieces of litigation in the pipeline waiting to be resolved, aggregate settlement amounts have only one way to move, and that's down," Grundfest said."In fact, because a smaller number of cases are now being filed and because those cases involve smaller market losses, I wouldn't be surprised if the aggregate annual settlement statistics fall dramatically over a period of several years."

There's probably another reason.

In the last few years, the law firm Millberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach were involved roughly 50 per cent of cases. The players in that firm have now been hit by a criminal indictment and a Massachusetts federal judge has ruled that the firm is "not adequate" lead counsel.

More on that here.

That must have an impact on this year's numbers.