The filing of federal class action securities lawsuits declined during the first half of 2010, mostly due to decreasing credit crisis-related claims, according to two new reports.

Cornerstone Research’s “Securities Class Action Filings, 2010 Mid-Year Assessment” reported Wednesday that plaintiffs filed 71 federal securities class actions during the first half of 2010, representing a 15.5% decrease from the 84 filed during each half of 2009.

Credit crisis-related litigation accounted for eight filings during the first six months of 2010, in contrast to 37 during the first half of 2009 and 16 in the second half of 2009, San Francisco-based Cornerstone reported.

“The securities fraud litigation wave stimulated by the credit crisis now appears to be history,” said Joseph Grundfest, director of the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which cooperates with Cornerstone Research to produce the report. “We have an inventory of cases waiting to be dismissed, settled or tried, but to borrow a phrase from the current Gulf oil spill crisis, it seems that this flow has largely been capped.”

Meanwhile, New York-based NERA Economic Research reported Tuesday that it counted 101 securities class actions filed during the first half of 2010, according to its “Trends 2010 Mid-Year Study.”

“If the pace of filings to date continues, there will be a total of 202 federal securities class actions filed in 2010,” NERA said in a statement. “This would represent a decline from the 221 filings observed in 2009 and the 248 filings in 2008.”

The median settlement for the first six months of 2010 was considerably higher than for prior years, NERA said. “At $11.8 million, the median settlement exceeded 2009’s value of $9 million by almost one-third, crossing the $10 million mark for the first time,” NERA reported. Investor losses were a driving force, reaching $436 million during the first half of 2010, the highest level since 1996, NERA said.

The Cornerstone report is available at http://securities.stanford.edu/clearinghouse_research.

The NERA report is available at www.nera.com/67_6813.htm.