(CN) - Lime Energy Company shareholders filed a class action after the company's audit committee discovered accounting irregularities in financial statements dating back to 2010.
     The lawsuit, filed in the U.S.D.C Northern District of Illinois, names Lime Energy president and CEO John O'Rourke, CFO Jeffrey Mistarz, and Lime's former CEO David Asplund as defendants.
     According to the complaint, on July 17, 2012, the company revealed that its audit committee determined that financial statements filed with the Securities Exchange Commission from December 2010 to March 2012 could no longer be relied upon.
     According to a press release issued that day, "based on the results of that partial internal review, the Company's management and the Audit Committee believe that some portion of the Company's revenue was improperly recorded. In some cases, it appears that non-existent revenue may have been recorded."
     Lime's stock plummeted 44.83 per cent to close at $1.12 per share on after the news hit the market, the suit states.
     Shareholders claim they suffered "millions of dollars in damages" due to the defendants' improper accounting of revenues and that the company's accounting standards were not in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
     They are represented by Maya Saxena, Joseph E. White III, and Adam Warden of Saxena White P.A. in Boca Raton, Fla., Katharine M. Ryan and Richard A. Maniskas of Ryan & Maniskas in Wayne, Pa. and Norman Rifkind, Heidi VonderHeide, and Amelia S. Newton of Lasky & Rifkind in Chicago.