Topeka ? An attorney who has been critical of Westar Energy Inc. and its former chairman says he and other lawyers are watching a shareholder lawsuit filed against the company.

The suit charges the company and its top executives with knowingly issuing false and misleading statements about the company’s finances. It contends hundreds of thousands of people lost money because Westar securities sold at artificially high prices.

The attorney, Dan Lykins of Topeka, has been a vocal critic of David Wittig, who resigned as Westar chief executive officer in November, following his indictment on federal charges that he and a former Topeka banker hid the true purpose of a $1.5 million loan to Wittig. The loan was unrelated to Westar business.

Lykins raised Wittig’s management of Westar as an issue during his unsuccessful run for the 2nd Congressional District seat last year. Westar is Kansas’ largest electric company.

He isn’t involved in the lawsuit filed last week. The attorneys who filed it hope it will be declared a class action, applying to anyone who bought Westar stock between March 30, 2001, and Dec. 26, 2002.

Lykins said he didn’t think the lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Topeka, was broad enough. He thinks it ought to apply to Westar’s management for the past five years.

Lykins said he and other lawyers would watch this suit and hope Westar’s papers are made public, making it easier to file more class-action suits.

“When the judge says ‘This is what you shall do,’ they listen,” Lykins said.

Critics contend Wittig and other top executives mismanaged the company, saddling it with too much debt from a foray into the security alarm business. The company has argued it suffered from financial woes that beset other utilities.

The company isn’t discussing the lawsuit filed last week because it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, spokeswoman Karla Olsen said.

The only named plaintiff is Howard B. Kahn, a Coral Springs, Fla., investor who owns 1,000 shares each of Westar’s common and preferred stock.

Filing the lawsuit on his behalf were attorneys with Swanson Midgley of Kansas City, Mo.; Schiffrin and Barroway, of Bala Cynwyd, Pa.; and Cauley Geller Bowman and Coates of Boca Raton, Fla.

The company is named in the suit, as well as James Haines, current director, chief executive officer and president; Wittig, former chairman of the board, CEO and president; James Martin, former senior vice president; and Paul Geist, current senior vice president and chief financial officer.

Kahn, who invests in energy and real estate, said he had lost more money on other investments over the years. He’s not really upset with Westar because its stock dividends have not dropped.

But he added: “Somewhere along the line they did some things they shouldn’t have done.”

Lykins himself owns 3,000 shares of Westar stock, but he bought them from the 1970s into the 1990s, meaning he wouldn’t be covered by the lawsuit filed last week.

Shares of Westar closed Friday at $11.18. Markets were closed Monday in observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Westar shares have tumbled since reaching a high of more than $43 a share in March 1998.