How to find pending class-action lawsuits

— -- Q: How can I find out if there are any pending securities class-action lawsuits filed against Kmart?

I've written extensively on the Kmart debacle and what happened to investors. You can read about it here and also here.

But that doesn't answer your question. I'll answer your question and in the meantime tell you about a website that will let you find out if any company has a securities class-action lawsuit filed against it.

The Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse operates a helpful website that lets you look up everything you want to know about these suits. You can start at the search page here.

Just enter the name of the company, Kmart in this case, into the Litigation Name field and click the Find Records button.

You'll then see all the references pertaining to that company. With Kmart, two litigation names show up: Kmart as it existed on the New York Stock Exchange and Sears Holdings: Kmart Holding. Kmart was later melded into Sears Holdings.

Click on the version of Kmart you're interested in and you can see all the pending litigation. If you're asking about the original Kmart stock, it looks as if that case has been settled. But you'll want to read the documents yourself to see if that case is relevant to your holdings.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Click here to see previous Ask Matt columns.