May 29, 2025
Benjamin D. Brown of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC helped cement his reputation as a respected thought leader in his field last year when he wrapped up multiple career-defining cases, including a landmark $375 million settlement in a wage suppression class action brought against Ultimate Fighting Championship, earning him a place among Law360’s 2025 Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar.
Brown, who stepped up as his firm’s managing partner in 2024, served as co-lead class counsel in the case against UFC that secured settlement funds for mixed martial arts, or MMA, fighters.
During the case, which dates back more than a decade, Brown and others tried to show that the UFC unlawfully monopolized the professional MMA bout market.
“Last year, it was an amazing year for me in a lot of ways. I’ve been working on a number of different big cases for many years, and then they all came to a head in different ways in 2024,” Brown said.
“At the same time I was getting some resolution in a lot of my big cases, I also took on these new responsibilities and got a chance to see my firm from a new vantage point as the managing partner,” he added. “All that coming together in one year was a bit of a whirlwind but also just incredibly gratifying on a professional level in so many different ways.”
The class that Brown represented said the UFC engaged fighters in exclusive contracts that unlawfully eliminated MMA competition through acquisitions and suppressed fighter compensation.
Because of the organization’s tactics, the UFC became the only option for MMA fighters to earn a viable living in the profession. They further alleged that, as a result of the UFC’s conduct, the organization received about 90% of all revenue generated by MMA events in the U.S., all the while paying the fighter a fraction of what they would earn in a competitive market.
Eric Cramer of Berger Montague, who served as co-counsel in the UFC case, said Brown was an integral part in getting the case off the ground all those years ago when not a lot of law firms wanted to take it up.
“Ben was one of the prime movers of his firm to get the case organized and started on behalf of the fighters and then Ben was important as we prepared to try the case. He thought through a lot of the complicated issues as we headed towards trial and participated in all the trial preparations. As someone … who has a lot of trial experience, it was very important to have him involved in a leadership role as we headed towards trial,” Cramer said.
Before approving the settlement in February 2024, the court asked tough questions about whether the amount was enough so that individual recoveries would be meaningful to the fighters, Brown said.
“We got a whole bunch of declarations from people, these retired fighters talking about what this settlement would mean for them personally, and — to use both the phrase the court used, and a lot of the plaintiffs use — how it was life changing. It was a real insight into how a recovery from a class action can really make a difference for a plaintiff,” he said.
Results like that of the UFC case are why Brown enjoys class action cases. That motivation evolved over the years because, at first, he was focused on having a major impact on corporate behavior.
“It was the thrill of the big case and the big impact that attracted me initially to class action litigation. But I will say, in the last few years, I’ve really realized what an impact some of these cases can make on people’s lives,” Brown said.
Brown saw the effects of his work when members in another one of his class actions that wrapped up in 2024 sent postcards. He served as co-counsel to help a nationwide class of home sellers secure more than $1 billion in total settlements in an antitrust lawsuit.
“It’s always really impactful when you reach through the complex litigation veneer, and get to see how these cases are changing people’s lives, or at least, if not changing their lives, impacting them,” Brown said
In that case, Moehrl v. National Association of Realtors , homeowners alleged that the National Association of Realtors and several massive residential real estate brokerage companies adopted anticompetitive rules requiring home sellers to pay the buyer’s broker fees at an inflated rate in addition to their own brokers’ commissions, Cohen Milstein said.
The settlement against the National Association of Realtors includes industry reforms that should increase transparency and fairness toward buyer broker commissions, as well as eliminate seller requirements to offer their home on multiple listing services and pay buyer brokers’ commissions, the firm said.
“I found that my trigger was pushed when I had an opportunity to get into a case and argue about the propriety of conduct that was distorting the market. It sounds very academic, but really you realize that, when you have functioning markets, it’s better for everybody, and society functions better. Consumers get better products, but also at better prices, and that gives them the space to enjoy their lives,” Brown said.
As someone who worked with Brown on a case for the past decade, Cramer has had a front-row seat to Brown’s successes. He said Brown is respected across the plaintiffs bar and antitrust community as a thought leader.
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How Brown chooses his cases: “When I look at a new case, I’m very much thinking about the effect that the conduct we’re looking at is having on the classes that we’ll eventually represent. Is this the kind of case that’s going to make a difference? Is this the kind of case that’s going to keep us motivated and eventually going to persuade a jury to award damages?”
Read Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar: Cohen Milstein’s Benjamin Brown.