When we last checked in on the shareholder suit that the New York City Employee Retirement System was pursuing against Apple, it was December, and a federal judge at California, Jeremy Fogel, had dismissed the city’s case. At the time, we were critical of the city’s decision to keep pursuing the matter after the dismissal, citing it as a case of where Mayor Bloomberg could have led by example. After all, Mr. Bloomberg last year joined with Senator Schumer to complain that “the prevalence of merit-less securities lawsuits and settlements in the U.S. has driven up the apparent and actual cost of business — and driven away potential investors.”

Now Judge Fogel has ruled again, and again vindicated the position these columns have taken from the start against this litigation. The judge’s latest ruling rejected the city’s motion to amend its complaint in the case, which relates to the alleged backdating of options grants to Apple executives, and reiterated, “Apple’s stock price did not fall as a result of backdating disclosures and thus Apple’s shareholders suffered no direct loss.”

Lawyers at the firm unsuccessfully representing the city in this case, Grant & Eisenhofer, have given thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to New York City politicians who would be in a position to oversee this litigation if they only bothered to attend the meetings of the new York City Employee Retirement System at which it was discussed.

We made this point in our original editorial of January 25, 2007, in which we wrote, “the notion of a shareholder suit against Apple strikes us, in any event, as a stretch. Whatever shenanigans went on with Steve Jobs’ stock options, the company’s stock price is up 600% over the past two years, far outpacing the overall gains by the stock market or NYCERS. Any reasonable shareholder should be happy as a clam.”

That January editorial also noted the revolving door between the city and Grant & Eisenhofer, whose Web site boasts that a senior counsel in its New York office, Leslie Conason, “was responsible for managing all securities litigation for the City of New York, where she was in charge of securities litigation for the $100 billion in pension assets held by the workers and retirees for the City of New York.”

We reiterated our skepticism of the merits of this case back in December after Judge Fogel’s first ruling. Now the judge has ruled again. If this was all so clear to newspaper editors and the judge, one wonders why the politicians who are the ostensible clients of the class action lawyers did not realize it before giving Grant & Eisenhofer the go-ahead to run up Apple’s legal bills. Maybe they were just hoping to get a chance to depose Apple director Al Gore about the options backdating so-called scandal.