Welch and grapes. (Wall Street West).

Former General Electric kingpin Jack Welch has been pummeled lately over his post-GE remuneration.

In Los Angeles, there are those who think he has taken too much off the table -- not of GE, but of Idealab, the Pasadena-based incubator.

It turns out the former GE chairman sat briefly on the Idealab board -- he was the only independent director -- and invested $1.9 million in privately held Idealab stock. When Welch left on Dec. 5, 2000, he cashed out and repayed every penny of his investment

That has caught the attention of venture shop Kline Hawkes California SBIC LP (which invests money, in part, on behalf of California state employee and retirees).

Kline Hawkes is lead plaintiff in the investor suit filed in late July that alleges Idealab's management, led by Chairman Bill Gross, has breached fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, among other corporate misdeeds. Idealab has flatly denied any wrongdoing.

In the suit, Kline Hawkes and other investors describe the Idealab stock as "worthless" at the time Welch got back his $1.87 million.

Idealab spokesman Steve Chadima dismissed the suit as sour grapes. "When they invested, they agreed to waive all rights to object to Idealab repurchases of stock," he said. Moreover, Idealab stock is not worthless, just hard to value, as it is not liquid, said Chadima.

"What you have is a bunch of very sophisticated investors who put money into Idealab thinking they could do a quick flip, when Idealab went public," Chadima said. "Their timing was bad, and the market became unreceptive to IPOs. We never went public. Now they are suing, trying to get Idealab's cash."

Contributing columnist Benjamin Mark Cole can be reached at [e-mail].