If you are a member of the proposed Class, you may move the court no later than December 7, 2007 to serve as a lead plaintiff for the Class. A Lead Plaintiff is a representative chosen by the Court, who acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

Murray, Frank & Sailer LLP and its predecessor firms have devoted its practice to shareholder class actions and complex commercial litigation for more than fifteen years and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for shareholders in class actions throughout the United States. You may visit our website at www.murrayfrank.com. If you would like to discuss this action, this announcement, or your rights and interests, please contact plaintiff’s counsel Brian D. Brooks of Murray, Frank & Sailer LLP.

Schwab reported earnings of $1.53 billion, or $1.28 per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with $266 million, or 21 cents per share, a year ago.

The latest earnings include a $1.2 billion after-tax gain from the sale of U.S. Trust, which was sold July 1 to Bank of America Corp. for $3.3 billion.

Excluding the gain, Schwab's earnings from continuing operations were $323 million, or 27 cents per share.

Schwab reported third-quarter revenue of $1.29 billion versus $1.07 billion in the year-ago period.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial, on average, forecast earnings of 25 cents per share on revenue of $1.26 billion for the quarter. Analysts do not typically include one-time items in their forecasts.

Operating earnings were boosted by $37.3 billion in net new assets brought by clients to Schwab during the third quarter, a 66 percent increase from the same quarter last year.

The new assets helped Schwab reach a record $1.441 trillion in total client assets as of Sept. 30.

Kenyetta Whipper, James' mother, contacted Liberty Counsel and met with Barbee. Liberty Counsel officials said they also sent a letter to the school's principal explaining that schools "cannot censor our religious speech" in events like a talent show for which students choose their own material to perform.

Nomura Holdings, Japan's largest brokerage, said it would pull out of the U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities market and cut a quarter of its U.S. workforce, pushing it to a big quarterly loss.

Nomura is the latest global investment bank forced to swallow bigger losses on products tied to to U.S. mortgage market, which was thrown into turmoil this year by rising defaults on subprime home loans.

It now expects to post a group pretax loss of 40-60 billion yen ($340-$511 million) for the July-September second quarter due to losses on residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and charges to cut its U.S. workforce to 900 from 1,217 as of June.

Nomura, which has been buying residential mortgages and bundling them for resale as securities, said it would focus its efforts in the U.S. on expanding its asset management business and electronic brokerage unit Instinet.

"This should all but clear up our problems in the United States, and we believe we can build a structure that will allow us to achieve a speedy recovery from the second half," Nomura Chief Financial Officer Masafumi Nakada told a news conference.

Nomura had said earlier this year it may pull out of the RMBS business as part of a reorganisation of its U.S unit, which lost 74 billion yen on a pretax basis in the two quarters to June as it wrote down the value of its mortgage loan portfolio.

The lawsuit is one more symptom of a softening housing market. The median price of an existing condo in Lee County has fallen 38 percent from February 2006, at $353,900, the highest on record, to $218,800 in August 2007, the last month available, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. For single-family homes, the price has fallen 22 percent from the all-time high of $322,300 in December 2005 to $250,800 in August 2007.

Builders in Southwest Florida are seeing such challenges more and more, said Christopher Shields, a real estate attorney with the Pavese law firm in Fort Myers.

"Potential purchasers are trying to get out of their contracts," he said. "Typically in a rising market, it doesn't matter whether or not a developer has committed violations at all, the buyer goes ahead and closes because he thinks the property is going to be worth more next year."

Now that prices are soft, however, "They look for reasons where perhaps the developer is in violation of federal and state disclosure requirements."

Some recent examples of similar suits by both buyers and builders trying to make the best of contracts signed in better times:

• A federal class action lawsuit brought by people who bought houses from First Home Builders alleges that they were defrauded by the developer and real estate brokerage D'Alessandro & Woodyard in a program to sell homes as an investment with a guaranteed rate of return.

• Advantage Builders of America in March sued 13 people for more than $15,000 in damages and attorneys' fees because they entered into contracts to buy houses in Lehigh Acres and Cape Coral but didn't make payments.

• The builders of Sail Harbour in February asked the court to force 29 people to close on their deals in the south Fort Myers development.

The suit against WCI was filed in federal court by David Berry and John Schrenkel, who signed up to buy Unit 1202 in the Florencia building at The Colony Golf & Bay Club in Estero.

They say WCI ran afoul of the Interstate Land Sale Act, which regulates the sale or lease of land from developers.

In this case, WCI violated the act by neglecting to include a provision in the contract giving a buyer 20 days to make things right after being notified that he's in default of the contract, said Miami-based attorney Robert Cooper, who filed the suit.

That means, he said, that "if some purchaser accidentally fails to do x, y or z, the builder can't just take the deposit."

In this case, Schrenkel and Berry want out of the contract and their $115,000 deposit returned.

But WCI attorney Thomas Roehn told Cooper in a July 2 letter that it's all just a misunderstanding. "Inadvertently, the 20 days notice of default and opportunity to cure was provided to the seller rather than the purchaser."

That means the buyers aren't entitled to their money back, the letter says. "WCI looks forward to Mr. Schrenkel and Mr. Berry closing upon their purchase of Unit 1202 at Florencia."

Cooper filed the case anyway, seeking damages for his clients and any other Florencia buyer in the same situation.

He said this is the first case he's seen in which the 20-day default protection for the buyer was left out. "I have not seen other developers screw this provision up."

If successful, the suit would be the latest bad news for WCI, which reported a $33 million loss for the quarter ending June 30 as condo tower sales all but dried up and traditional home sales were sluggish.

On Aug. 30, billionaire investor Carl Icahn gained influence on the company's board as he, two close associates, three incumbents and three jointly nominated members were elected to the board.