Symbol Technologies Inc. announced that its subsidiary, Telxon Corp., has settled a lawsuit against former auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers for $18 million.
Symbol, a maker of bar-code scanners, acquired Telxon in 2000, and sued PricewaterhouseCoopers a year later after it discovered that Telxon's audits from 1996 through 1999 did not meet the standards of generally accepted accounting principles. When Telxon later restated its financial results for those years, a shareholder class-action lawsuit was brought, charging Telxon with misleading investors.
In February 2004, Telxon received court approval from U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Ohio to pay $37 million to settle the class-action case. Telxon will pay up to $3 million of the proceeds from the PwC settlement to the class.
PwC will pay an additional $1 million if the accounting firm reaches a settlement agreement with the class before pending motions are decided in a related shareholder lawsuit.
