A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Criticare Systems (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) reported that it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a statement urging stockholders to support the company's strategy of building long-term value for all stockholders and to reject the efforts of dissident stockholder BlueLine Partners and its affiliates to place their handpicked nominees on Criticare's board. Criticare said that, if successful, this would give BlueLine control of the company without offering to pay anything to Criticare stockholders.

The company urged stockholders not to sign any consent they receive from BlueLine and, if they already have returned a signed consent form, to revoke the consent by using the consent revocation form it will be sending stockholders.

Criticare said that BlueLine, a hedge fund, and its affiliates, are seeking to remove Criticare's board and replace it with a slate of its nominees, including one of BlueLine's principals.

Criticare said BlueLine is seeking control of the board and the company "to extract a quick profit on its Criticare investment by attempting to either sell the company now, before the value of the company's current initiatives can be properly realized, or artificially increase the company's profits (and possibly stock price) in the short term by indiscriminately slashing research and development costs."

Criticare makes monitoring systems and noninvasive sensors for a range of hospitals and alternate healthcare environments throughout the world.