Shareholder Class Action Alleging Kmart Execs Undervalued Real Estate Holdings Is Dismissed

A New York federal judge has dismissed a shareholder suit alleging two top Kmart officials tried to drive down the price of the company's stock by toying with asset values during and just after its bankruptcy reorganization. Saying "plaintiffs' theory piles one unsubstantiated assumption on another," Judge Lewis Kaplan threw out a putative class action that claimed former board chairman Edward S. Lampert and Julian Day, Kmart's former president, COO and CEO, intentionally undervalued billions in real estate assets.