Talk about ungrateful.

A story in yesterday’s New York Sun (no relation to the Baltimore Sun) reports that the pension fund for New York City’s public employees re-filed a lawsuit last Friday seeking damages from Apple’s backdating of stock options several years ago.

“The complaint says Apple’s shareholders, including NYCERS [New York City Employees’ Retirement System], which owns about 1 million shares, suffered damages when the stock price ‘fell over 14% following disclosures’ in 2006 about how Apple had accounted for stock options,” the Sun reports. “Since 2005, Apple’s shares have risen about 500%.”

The New York Sun reporter went back further than necessary to emphasize the rapid rise in Apple’s stock price. If you go back to July 14, 2006, when the backdating imbroglio had many on Wall Street in a stew, AAPL hit its low for the year at $50.67. Yesterday AAPL closed at $184.40, an increase of 364 percent.

Perhaps a better way to look at it is that over the course of 2006 AAPL went up, erasing any temporary setbacks caused by the backdating issue. The stock opened the year at $71.89 and closed it at $84.84.

What possible damages could Apple owe any shareholders after achieving such extraordinary gains?

Judge Jeremy Fogel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed when he threw out the first incarnation of this lawsuit last month: "While the subsequent disclosure that the options were backdated might require a restatement, without a discernible drop in the stock price there is no basis upon which to establish an injury to shareholders,'' Fogel wrote in his opinion.

As he rejected their claims, Fogel suggested NYCERS could re-file a derivative lawsuit, which had said CEO Steve Jobs and other Apple officers failed to perform their jobs correctly and lied to shareholders about the backdated options. However, winning this lawsuit would only result in the backdated options or profits gained from them to be returned to company. No damages would be awarded to the plaintiffs.

For reasons unexplained in the New York Sun article, NYCERS has decided to file a new version of its lawsuit anyway. And it will land right back in Judge Fogel’s courtroom at a hearing in January when he will determine whether the case can go forward.

Not only is this lawsuit utterly futile, it could harm the very pension fund it is supposed to protect. Did NYCERS ever consider that filing and re-filing lawsuits against Apple could negatively affect the stock price?

Wall Street has mostly forgotten about the whole thing; NYCERS would be wise to forget about it as well and save itself the lawyer’s fees.

Instead of filing lawsuits, NYCERS should be writing Apple thank-you notes. Sheesh.

UPDATE: The New York Sun published an editorial Dec. 20 calling NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg on the carpet for not stopping NYCERS' "meritless" lawsuit despite publicly criticizing such suits. Read it here.