“The credit crisis was a watershed event in securities litigation,” says John Molka III, the author of the report. The amount of filings in 2010 and 2011—even though the crisis has eased—may represent a “new normal,” he adds.

New securities fraud suits, filed by regulators and law enforcement, represented 35 percent of suits filed during the first quarter. Financial firms and their director and officers are named as defendants most often, the report says.

However, the “breach-of-fiduciary-duties category has been the real driver of growth,” says Dave Bradford, Advisen executive vice president. “Many of these are so-called merger-objection suits, which typically are filed following the announcement of a merger or acquisition.”

Accounting for 33 percent of suits filed in the first quarter, breach-of-fiduciary-duty suits have grown rapidly as a percentage of all suits filed—from 8 percent in 2004 to 24 percent in 2009, and then 32 percent in 2010.

Information-technology companies were sued for breach of fiduciary duty most often, with health-care firms, financial firms and consumer discretionary firms also receiving lawsuits.

The average settlement of securities suits during the first quarter was $21.2 million, about the same as all of 2010 ($19.9 million). Securities class-action lawsuits continue to account for the largest awards, with an average $54.6 million during the first quarter. Though they once made up about a third of all suits filed, class-action lawsuits represented 18 percent of new filings in the first quarter, Advisen says.