Robert Dumas is a staff attorney at Cohen Milstein and a member of the Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice. He is engaged in document discovery and review and in preparing the attorneys in deposing witnesses. Since joining the firm in 2014, he has worked on some of the most important mortgage backed securities (MBS) litigations to emerge from the financial crisis.
Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Mr. Dumas practiced at a leading plaintiff firm, litigating securities fraud matters, and then later at a smaller plaintiff firm, where he helped litigate the In re IPO Securities Litigation, in which investors accused the leading investment banks of rigging IPOs during the 1990s tech bubble; after nearly a decade of legal wrangling, a $586 million settlement was reached. Earlier, he practiced at a leading intellectual property and trademark law firm, where he defended trademark matters for an international clothing manufacturer.
Currently, Mr. Dumas is helping litigate the following matters:
- In re Interest Rate Swaps Market Manipulation Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein is court appointed Co-Lead Counsel in this groundbreaking putative class action, charging 12 Wall Street banks with conspiring to engineer and maintain a collusive and anti-competitive stranglehold over the interest rate swaps market – one of the world’s biggest financial markets.
- Stock Lending Antitrust Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein is co-leading an antitrust class action alleging that major investment banks conspired to prevent the stock lending market from evolving by boycotting and interfering with various platforms and services designed to increase transparency and reduce costs in the stock lending market.
He helped successfully litigate the following notable matters:
- NovaStar MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): On March 8, 2019, the Court granted final approval to a $165 million settlement in connection with losses from securities issued by NovaStar Mortgage Inc., a major subprime lender prior to the housing crisis, and several top Wall Street banks.
- HEMT MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $110 million settlement with Credit Suisse. Cohen Milstein was lead counsel in a case alleging Credit Suisse and its affiliates sold toxic securities to pension fund investors. Mr. Dumas was deeply involved in document discovery and working on motions, and he played a lead role in preparing the Rule 56.1 statement.
Mr. Dumas graduated from the State University of New York at Albany with a B.A. in History and received his J.D. from Cornell Law School. During law school, he served as an Editor of the Journal of Law and Public Policy.