Companies that fess up to bad earnings news face fewer shareholder lawsuits later, according to a University of Iowa study. Companies that wait until the last few weeks of a quarter to announce they will not meet analysts’ earnings expectations are 45 times more likely to face shareholder lawsuits than firms that make the announcement in the first weeks of the quarter, according to the study by Richard Mergenthaler, an accounting professor in the Tippie College of Business. From 1996-2005, U.S. firms shelled out more than $15 billion in total settlements for securities-related class-action lawsuits, and billions more fighting lawsuits that never made it to settlement.