During the 1990s, David Cole got swept up into an accounting controversy surrounding America Online.

The 55-year-old CEO of Maui Land & Pineapple Co. was one of 19 former AOL officers, directors and accountants named in a 1997 lawsuit that accused AOL of inflating its financial forecasts while its executives sold their personal stock for millions of dollars.

The suit alleged that Cole "sold 57,100 shares of AOL stock at artificially inflated prices of $39 3/4 to $51 per share based on inside information, pocketing $2.5 million. These sales constituted 77 percent of the AOL stock Cole actually owned."

AOL settled the suit in 1998 by agreeing to pay $35 million.

In a telephone interview on Friday, Cole said such suits were commonplace in the high-tech industry during the 1990s.

Cole said he couldn't recall if he sold 57,100 shares more than 10 years ago as the suit alleged but he disputed the claim that he sold 77 percent of his AOL stock. Cole, who sold his former company NaviSoft Inc. to AOL for stock in 1994, said he continues to own most of those shares.

"These suits were a virus in the industry," Cole said. "Any experienced executive or director of a public company would be exposed to these."

Cole said that one of the firms behind the suit — Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP — had a reputation for filing "strike suits," which aim to extract settlements from companies that want to avoid the cost of litigation.

He added that the firm's top attorney in the AOL case — Bill Lerach — is serving a two-year jail sentence. Lerach was accused by federal prosecutors of taking kickbacks from clients in securities fraud cases.

Cole said he only became aware of the lawsuit and read it for the first time last month after The Advertiser asked him questions about the suit.

During a telephone interview last month, he initially said that the suit may have referred to another AOL executive also named David Cole.

That executive, David L. Cole, was senior vice president of Systems Operations for AOL, said ML&P spokeswoman Teri Freitas Gorman. Maui Pine's CEO is David C. Cole, who was an AOL senior vice president and was president of AOL Enterprises, Gorman said.

The lawsuit did not provide Cole's middle initial and referred to him only as a company senior vice president.

Gorman said she later confirmed that the lawsuit referred to Maui Pine's CEO after checking with AOL's attorneys on the Mainland.

Cole, who worked at AOL from 1994 to 1997, said last week that the suit was filed after he left AOL and that he played no role in the litigation. He said he wasn't served by the lawsuit, wasn't asked to give a deposition and wasn't involved in the settlement talks.

One longtime supporter said the lawsuit shouldn't cast doubt on Cole's character.

"I've know David for a long time. Our kids grew up with each other," said Jeff Watanabe, local attorney and chairman of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. "I've never had reason to doubt his integrity."