Securities Litigation & Investor Protection
Powerful advocates for corporate accountability.
When companies commit fraud or executives breach their fiduciary duties, we partner with investors to hold the wrongdoers accountable – pursuing class or derivative actions that recover significant monetary damages and achieve meaningful change.
We have returned billions of dollars to defrauded shareholders through the development of groundbreaking legal theories, efficient and effective case-management techniques, zealous advocacy, and skillful litigation.
We have achieved some of the largest securities class action settlements in history, including the historic, all-cash $1 billion settlement against Wells Fargo, now the 17th largest securities class action settlement of all time and the 6th largest in the last decade; and the $500 million Bear Stearns Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates Litigation, one of nine cases we led that recouped more than $2.5 billion for investors in mortgage-backed securities. We also represent shareholders of publicly traded companies in derivative lawsuits that hold accountable corporate leaders who breach their fiduciary duties, harming the company and investors. We crafted settlements with Alphabet ($310 million), Wynn Resorts ($90 million), L Brands ($90 million), and other companies that combined large financial commitments with sweeping corporate governance reforms aimed at preserving long-term shareholder value.
We work with our colleagues in the Antitrust practice to represent institutional investors in class actions that use the antitrust laws to break big banks’ costly stranglehold on the multi-trillion-dollar markets for stock lending, interest-rate swaps, and other opaquely traded financial products. Our work doesn’t stop at the U.S. borders. Drawing on a deep expertise, we help investors determine their best approach to pursuing foreign securities cases. The counsel we selected for our clients in a case against Fortis N.V. in Belgium achieved the largest ever non-U.S. securities settlement, €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion).
Beyond litigation, we provide customized and comprehensive portfolio monitoring and case evaluation services to approximately 200 institutional investors. All of our portfolio monitoring services are performed exclusively in-house and designed to ensure clients meet their fiduciary obligations to their members by making informed choices when faced with substantial losses and in determining whether to remain an absent class member, seek lead plaintiff status, or opt-in to foreign litigation.
Our work on behalf of investors has earned thanks from our pension fund clients, respect from opposing counsel, and praise from judges.
- California Superior Court Judge Brian C. Walsh said our “groundbreaking” $310 million settlement in the Alphabet Derivative Litigation codified a “best in class approach … to address sexual harassment sexual misconduct, discrimination, retaliation, inequity and inclusion in the workplace.” He called the result “a credit to what … your profession can do to solve a problem.”
- And in approving the $335 million RALI MBS settlement, U.S. District Judge Katherine P. Failla praised Cohen Milstein’s prescience and perseverance in pursuing the case: “I don’t want to demean this by saying that fortune favors the brave, but that is what happened here,” she said. “Plaintiffs’ counsel took on an enormous amount of risk and stuck with it for nearly seven years.”
Current Cases
Seavitt, et al. v. N-Able
Seavitt, et al. v. N-Able, Inc. (Del. Chn.): Cohen Milstein represents a shareholder of N-able’s common stock in a groundbreaking legal issue challenging the validity of nine provisions in a governance agreement N-able entered into with its lead investors at the time of its IPO. Plaintiff claims the provisions violate Delaware General Corporations Law because they unduly favor certain shareholder control over the company. On July 25, 2024, the court agreed that many of the provisions are statutorily invalid. This is only the second time the court has addressed the validity of such provisions.
In re Abbott Laboratories Infant Formula Shareholder Derivative Litigation
In re Abbott Laboratories Infant Formula Shareholder Derivative Litigation (N.D. Ill.): Cohen Milstein is Co-Lead Counsel in this shareholder derivative lawsuit against Abbott’s board of directors for breaching their fiduciary duties related to the company’s manufacture and sale of infant formula products, prompting a major recall and nationwide infant formula shortage and allegedly causing billions of dollars of damage to Abbott. Plaintiffs also allege claims of insider trading, corporate waste, and unjust enrichment, as well as violations of the federal securities laws.
Matterport Shareholder Derivative Litigation
Matterport Shareholder Derivative Litigation (Del. Ch.): On February 6, 2024, Cohen Milstein and co-counsel filed a verified stockholders’ derivative complaint nominally, on behalf of Matterport Inc., against the Company’s directors, officers, their affiliated entities, and others, who were unjustly enriched by the Board of Directors’ approval of a self-interested transaction.
Past Cases
In re Wells Fargo & Company Securities Litigation
In re Wells Fargo & Company Securities Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein, as Co-Lead Counsel, represented Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi and the Employees Retirement System of Rhode Island in this securities fraud class action. Plaintiffs alleged that Wells Fargo and certain former executives misrepresented its compliance with a series of 2018 consent orders with the CFPB, OCC, and the Federal Reserve arising from the Bank’s widespread consumer fraud banking scandal. On September 8, 2023, the Court granted final approval of a historic $1 billion settlement, which is the largest securities class action settlement in 2023, the sixth largest in the last decade, the ninth largest ever in the Second Circuit, and the 17th largest ever. It is also the largest settlement ever without a restatement or related actions by the Securities Exchange Commission or U.S. Department of Justice.
MF Global Securities Litigation
MF Global Securities Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein represented the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund and achieved a $90 million settlement in this precedent–setting securities class action in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with the plaintiffs and held that companies cannot make false or misleading statements in their offering documents and then hide behind risk disclosures related to those facts to escape liability. The National Law Journal singled out Cohen Milstein’s work on the case in connection with its selection of the firm as a Hot Plaintiffs’ Firm for that year. Cohen Milstein was Co-Lead Counsel.
LIBOR Antitrust Litigation (Exchange Traded Class)
In re: Libor-Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein played a significant role in representing the putative Exchange-Based Plaintiffs class that was a part of this large multi-district litigation that was consolidated in 2011. On September 17, 2020, after significant litigation, the court granted final approval of a $187 million settlement between the Exchange-Based Plaintiffs and seven of the 16 of the world’s largest banks, and on April 26, 2024, the court preliminarily approved an additional $3.45 in settlements against the remaining defendants. The combined settlements totaling more than $190 million represent the largest recovery in a “futures-only” commodities class action litigation.