Mona Benach is of counsel in Cohen Milstein’s Securities Litigation & Investment Protection practice, where she represents public pension funds and other institutional investors in securities class actions and shareholder derivative lawsuits.
With more than two decades of securities litigation and internal investigation experience in both the private and public sectors, Mona brings to bear a wealth of insight on securities laws. Her roles have included assistant general counsel at a nationally renowned investment bank and asset management company, as well as assistant director of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and senior counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Division of Enforcement.
Prior to entering private practice, Mona was a law clerk for the Honorable Deborah Chasanow of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.
While attending Columbia Law School, Mona was a Harlan Fiske Stone Honor Scholar and senior editor of the Columbia Law Review.
Kit A. Pierson is of counsel at Cohen Milstein and a member of the Antitrust practice. Kit has also had the honor of serving as co-chair of the Antitrust practice (2010-2017). Under his leadership, the Legal 500 recognized Cohen Milstein as a Leading Plaintiff Class Action Firm for seven consecutive years and Law360 selected the Antitrust practice as a Competition Law Practice Group of the Year in 2013 and 2014.
Kit has served as lead or co-lead counsel in many of the nation’s most significant antitrust class actions on behalf of the victims of corporations engaged in price-fixing, market monopolization and other unlawful conduct. Prior to joining Cohen Milstein in 2009, he spent more than 20 years primarily representing defendants in a broad range of complex matters. Some of the companies he represented included Microsoft Corp., 3M Corp. and other major corporations, national associations and individuals in class actions and other antitrust litigation. As a result of his experience as a defense lawyer, Kit possesses deep insight into defense strategies, understands the dynamics of the other side and is someone who has earned the respect and credibility of opposing counsel.
Kit is a hands-on litigator who has litigated and tried antitrust lawsuits and other complex civil cases in many jurisdictions, helping to win settlements and judgments cumulatively totaling more than $1.8 billion in the past several years.
A champion for civil rights, Kit has also litigated a number of high profile civil rights cases, including pro bono cases:
- Ahmed v. Obama (D.D.C.): In Ahmed v. Obama, Cohen Milstein represented a young Yemeni man incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay for eight years. After conducting one of the earliest habeas corpus proceedings challenging the legality of these detentions, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Ahmed had been illegally detained and the court directed that he be granted freedom and returned to his home.
- Maryland Public Information Act Litigation (Md.): Mr. Pierson was co-counsel with the Maryland Civil Liberties Union in this litigation seeking records relating to illegal surveillance and infiltration of the American Friends Service Committee and local peace and anti-death penalty organization by Maryland State police. The evidence of improper law enforcement activity secured in this litigation resulted in appointment of a former Maryland Attorney General to conduct an investigation and the subsequent enactment of the Freedom of Association and Assembly Protection Act of 2009.
Kit is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, a national organization, and a Member of the ACLU of Maryland’s Committee on Litigation and Legal Priorities. He is also a board member of the Washington Urban Debate League.
Kit has taught Complex Litigation as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School (a class that focused primarily on legal, ethical and strategic issues presented by class action litigation) and Antitrust Class Actions as a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School (a class examining legal, ethical and strategic issues in antitrust class action litigation).
At the University of Michigan Law School, Kit was a note editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.
Takisha D. Richardson leads the Sexual Abuse & Sex Trafficking team at Cohen Milstein with a special focus on representing child sexual abuse victims and adult survivors of sexual abuse. She approaches each client and case with compassion, an attention to detail, and dedication to zealous advocacy.
With more than 100 jury and non-jury trials under her belt, Takisha is a seasoned litigator whose experience mostly involves sexual abuse and/or homicide matters.
Takisha brings vast criminal trial and government experience to prosecuting perpetrators and helping victims. Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, she was an Assistant State Attorney and Chief of the Special Victims Unit of the State Attorney’s Office for Palm Beach County, Florida where she was responsible for the prosecution of crimes against children and the elderly, and sexually motivated offenses. She also prosecuted felony cases at all levels and was an Assistant Public Defender.
Outside of her legal work, Takisha is a passionate mentor and advocate for teen girls. Through her Sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, she provides mentorship, goal setting, and educational development skills to local high school girls. She finds great joy in investing her time, resources and personal and professional experiences with teenage girls. Her commitment to being a role model for young girls has been a passion project for Takisha for nearly two decades.
Takisha is a sought-out speaker on topics ranging from achieving justice for victims of abuse to empowering teen girls.
In 2023, Takisha was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Susan M. Greenwood is a member of Cohen Milstein’s Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice. With extensive experience in the area of securities law and class action litigation, Susan analyzes and evaluates securities litigation case opportunities.
Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Susan was a securities law specialist at Bloomberg Law, providing analysis of trends and developments in securities litigation, regulation and enforcement and serving as the editor of the Bloomberg Law Securities Litigation and Enforcement Report. She has also served as counsel at a prominent insurance company and two large litigation firms.
Raymond M. Sarola represents whistleblowers in qui tam cases brought under the federal and state False Claims Act statutes in industries that conduct business with the government, including health care, defense, and financial services. Ray also represents clients in whistleblower matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Internal Revenue Service, and other agencies.
Ray is also a member of the firm’s Ethics & Fiduciary Counseling practice, where he calls upon his experience a Senior Policy Advisor & Counsel in the Mayor’s Office of the City of New York. There, he represented the Mayor and Commissioner of Finance on the boards of the City’s pension systems and deferred compensation plan and advised on legal issues regarding pension investments, benefit payments, securities litigation, and corporate governance initiatives.
Ray’s government service and corporate defense litigation experience has been invaluable in counseling clients regarding their claims against the government and corporate entities.
Richard A. Speirs is of counsel at Cohen Milstein and a member of the Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice. He is principally responsible for developing and litigating the firm’s derivative and merger-related lawsuits. He has also worked on many of the mortgage-backed securities fraud cases that were successfully litigated by the firm.
In a career spanning more than 35 years, Richard has been lead or co-lead attorney in a number of securities class actions where the court has issued an important decision under the federal securities laws. Among the issues decided were the improper grouping of unaffiliated investors in a lead plaintiff motion (In re Telxon Corp. Securities Litigation (N.D. Ohio 1999)); recommendation of default sanction against auditing firm for discovery misconduct involving electronic audit work papers (Hayman v. PriceWaterhouseCoopers (N.D. Ohio 2004)); and liability under Section 10(b) of a non-issuer for disclosures made by the issuer (In re BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust Securities Litigation (W.D. Wash. 2007)). In recent years Richard litigated a number of highly successful derivative lawsuits which resulted in hundreds of millions in recovery on behalf of stockholders and the adoption of significant corporate governance reforms at a number of companies.
Luke Bierman is of counsel to Cohen Milstein, and adviser to the Ethics and Fiduciary Counseling and Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practices. He counsels pension funds and public entities on fiduciary, ethics, governance, and compliance issues.
Luke joined Cohen Milstein in 2011, bringing with him a singular perspective and substantive experience as in-house general counsel to one of the largest public pension funds in the country, appointments to state task forces to review the state code of judicial ethics and professionalism, and a scholarly and academic background as the Dean and Professor of Law at a law school twice recognized as among the most innovative in the world. His experience provides him with a unique context for assisting public pension funds at critical and challenging times for those funds, and to offer collaborative and creative solutions.
Luke served from 2007 to 2010 as General Counsel for the Office of the New York State Comptroller, the sole trustee of the state’s then $160 billion pension fund and the state’s chief fiscal officer for the state of New York’s then $160 billion budget. This was when the Office of the Comptroller faced unprecedented challenges including an international placement agent scandal and the Great Recession. Luke was the third ranking official in an agency of 2,500 employees managing a legal staff that included 100 staff with 55 attorneys and was responsible for legal advice and counsel on all matters relating to the comptroller’s constitutional and statutory responsibilities, including fiduciary, governance, ethics, litigation, investment, pension benefits, state and municipal finance and legislative matters. He also managed the 35 outside law firms that represented the Comptroller in litigation and transactional matters.
Luke is a noted expert on legal ethics and professionalism, who has spoken and written widely about state courts and judicial conduct. He has served as a member of the North Carolina Commission on Administration of Law and Justice and on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. He was a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Task Force on the Code of Judicial Conduct, which was assigned to review and suggest updates to the Court. He served on the ABA Presidential Task Force on Financing Legal Education and the ABA Presidential Task Force on Legal Access JobCorps. While working at the American Bar Association, Luke initiated the project that resulted in revisions to the Model Code of Judicial Conduct (2007), which many states have since adopted. He is Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he, as Dean, spearheaded the creation of a unique law curriculum that blends the most important traditional elements of legal education with highly experiential learning in the nation’s first 2½ year JD program.
Previously, Luke was the Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Distinguished Professor of Practice of Law at Northeastern University School of Law, where he was responsible for the Cooperative Legal Education Program. Earlier in his career, he served as a Fellow in Government Law and Policy at Albany Law School, Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues at North Carolina State University, where he held the rank of Associate Professor of Political Science; as founding director of the Justice Center and Special Assistant to the President of the American Bar Association; and as Visiting Specialist in Constitutional Law with the rank of Associate Professor at The Richard Stockton College (now University) of New Jersey. Luke also taught at Northwestern University School of Law, the University at Albany – State University of New York and Trinity College in Hartford. He also clerked for appellate judges in New York state shortly after law school.
Luke is widely published for his legal analysis and is a frequent lecturer and commentator about corporate governance reform, fiduciary responsibility and ethics and justice reform. He was a member of the board of directors of the Council of Institutional Investors, where he co-chaired the policies committee. He has been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 2002.
Jay Chaudhuri has spent his career fighting for and working on behalf of the people of North Carolina. Before joining Cohen Milstein, Jay served as General Counsel & Senior Policy Advisor at the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer, the sole trustee of the state’s $90 billion pension fund and administrator of the $8 billion defined contribution plan.
Jay oversaw all legal and corporate governance matters. He recovered more than $100 million for the pension and unclaimed property funds, including settlements with a real estate investment manager and custodian bank. Jay played a key role in uncovering alleged wrongdoing that led to eight investment managers paying the pension fund back $15 million and tougher, cutting-edge ethical standards for these managers.
Jay also helped organize a coalition of 11 public pension funds against Massey Energy’s Board of Directors and chairman, after a coal-mining explosion resulted in the death of 29 workers. That engagement resulted in key corporate governance changes and the chairman’s resignation. Today, the coalition’s engagement is cited as a model of collaboration among shareholder rights advocates. In addition, Jay worked closely with the Harvard Shareholder Rights Project where the department helped declassify twenty corporate boards, including Stanley Black & Decker, Hess, Lexmark, Foot Locker, and Jarden Corporation. Jay served as chair of the Council of Institutional Investors, an association of pension funds with combined assets of more than $3 trillion which serves as the leading voice for effective corporate governance and strong shareholder rights. As chair, he led the development and adoption of the organization’s long-term strategic plan.
Before joining the Department of State Treasurer, Jay served as Special Counsel at the North Carolina Department of Justice, where he led an investigation by all 50 attorneys general that resulted in a landmark agreement with two leading social networking sites to better protect children from Internet predators. For his efforts, the National Association of Attorneys General honored him with the Marvin Award, given to an individual who furthers the association’s goals.
The North Carolina Bar Association has awarded Jay its Citizen Lawyers Award, given to lawyers who provide exemplary service to the communities. Lawyers Weekly has also honored him with its Leader in the Law award. In addition, he has been awarded the William C. Friday Fellowship, Henry Toll Fellowship, and American Marshall Memorial Fellowship.
Jay currently serves in the North Carolina State Senate where he serves as the Senate Democratic Whip. He is the first South Asian American to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly.
Jeanne A. Markey is of counsel at Cohen Milstein and a member of the Whistleblower practice. She has successfully represented whistleblowers in federal and state cases across the country in some of highest-profile qui tam litigation in the healthcare, defense, financial services, and education industries. She has also represented whistleblower clients in the public housing sector, in S.E.C. related matters, and in matters involving complex financial instruments.
Representative settled cases include:
- United States of America et al., ex rel. Lauren Kieff, v. Wyeth: Jeanne was co-lead counsel in this False Claims Act whistleblower case against pharmaceutical giant Wyeth (subsequently acquired by Pfizer), in which the whistleblowers alleged that Wyeth defrauded Medicaid, the joint federal/state healthcare program for the poor, when it reported falsely inflated prices for its acid suppression drug Protonix from 2001 through 2006 for Medicaid rebate purposes. Weeks before trial, in February 2016, in one of the largest qui tam settlements in U.S. history, Wyeth agreed to pay $784.6 million to the U.S. government and the over 35 intervening states.
- United States et al. ex relators v. Southern SNF Management, Inc. and Rehab Services in Motion, LLC: Jeanne was lead counsel in this False Claims Act case in which three whistleblowers employed by a chain of skilled nursing facilities located in Florida and Alabama alleged that the chain was engaged in a multi-year scheme of inflating the facilities’ Medicare collections by assigning Medicare patients to levels of therapy, (often referred to as “RUG” levels), higher than what was medically reasonable and necessary for that patient. In July 2018 this case settled for $10 million.
- Ven-A-Care Whistleblower Litigation: Jeanne was involved in a series of Ven-A-Care whistleblower cases which pertained to the inflated reimbursement amounts drug companies were causing Medicare and Medicaid to pay for prescription drugs by reporting inflated wholesale prices to the government. These large, highly-successful groundbreaking cases helped to pave the way for a wide range of subsequent False Claims Act cases in the realm of healthcare and directed at drug companies in particular.
In 2016, Jeanne was recognized as one of the top 25 women lawyers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by The Legal Intelligencer. In 2018, she, an alumna of Cornell University Law School, was invited to become a member of The President’s Council of Cornell Women.
She is also an active member of Taxpayers Against Fraud, a nonprofit, public interest organization dedicated to combating fraud against the Federal Government through the promotion and use of the Federal False Claims Act and its Qui Tam provisions, and the Association of qui tam attorneys.
Jeanne frequently speaks about developments in the qui tam field and has co-authored several articles about topics including statistical sampling and representing whistleblowers in cases involving issues of medical necessity.
Kai Richter, of counsel in Cohen Milstein’s Employee Benefits/ERISA practice, has extensive trial and appellate experience in ERISA class action litigation in federal courts across the country.
Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Kai was a partner and practice leader at a highly regarded national plaintiffs’ law firm, where he represented clients in all manner of class actions, including over two dozen ERISA class actions as court-appointed class counsel.
Kai’s experience also includes public service as the Manager of the Complex Litigation Division of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, and as a litigator in the Office of General Counsel for the Federal Election Commission.
A sought-after public speaker, Kai has spoken frequently on ERISA before the American Law Institute, American Bar Association, Professional Liability Underwriting Society, Retirement Advisor Council, Practising Law Institute, and American Conference Institute.
In addition, Kai has held teaching roles as the co-director of the Robert F. Wagner Labor Law Moot Court Program for the University of Minnesota Law School, and as an adjunct legal writing instructor at Hamline University. He also formerly served as the co-chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association Consumer Litigation Section.