Crown Books was sued over a 1983 prospectus.

A stockholder of Crown Books Corp. accused the company, its officers and directors and Prudential-Bache Securities--the underwriter of the firm’s initial public offering--of misrepresenting and omitting important information in the prospectus. The class-action suit filed in New York seeks unspecified damages and charged that, rather than increasing capital expenditures for new store openings and inventory, Crown planned “to maintain the proceeds of the public offering . . . in order to increase interest income and to make investments outside of the company.” A lawyer for Crown declined to comment.