The law firm of Finkelstein, Thompson & Loughran hereby announces that it has filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of investors who purchased the publicly traded securities of Meade Instruments, Inc. ("Meade") (Nasdaq: MEAD) between September 27, 2001 and August 29, 2006.

The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, Defendants misrepresented and omitted material facts concerning Meade's backdating of stock option grants to its officers John Diebel and Steven Murdock. Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that at all times during the Class Period, Meade represented that the exercise price of all stock options would be no less than the fair market value of Meade's common stock, measured by the publicly traded closing price for Meade stock on the day of the grant.

However, in reality, those options were backdated so their exercise price correlated to a day on or near the day Meade's stock hit its low price for the year, or directly in advance of sharp increases in the price of Meade stock. Defendant Diebel directly benefited by exercising these backdated options.

As the truth concerning Meade's practice of backdating option grants gradually became known to the market from a variety of sources, the price of Meade's stock fell $0.70, or 25%, between May 22, 2006 and August 29, 2006.

If you are a member of the class, you may, no later than November 27, 2006, request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff of the class. A lead plaintiff is a class member appointed by the Court to direct the litigation on behalf of the class. Although a class member need not be appointed as a lead plaintiff to receive a proportionate share of any proceeds of the litigation, lead plaintiffs make important decisions that could affect the prosecution of the class claims, including decisions concerning settlement. The securities laws create a rebuttable presumption that the plaintiff with the largest financial interest in the litigation is the most adequate to serve as a lead plaintiff.

Finkelstein, Thompson & Loughran has spent almost three decades delivering outstanding representation to institutional and individual clients in connection with securities and other finance-related litigation, and has been appointed as lead or co-lead counsel in dozens of shareholder class actions. Indeed, in the past ten years, the firm has served in leadership roles in cases that have recovered over $1 billion for investors and consumers.