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

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In re Orthofix Medical, Inc. Securities Litigation

In re Orthofix Medical, Inc. Securities Litigation (E.D. Tex.): Cohen Milstein, as sole Lead Counsel, represents investors in a securities fraud class action against Orthofix Medical Inc. and SeaSpine Holdings Corporation and certain senior executives for entering a merger without conducting thorough due diligence. The newly appointed CEO, CFO, and CLO of Orthofix, formerly with SeaSpine, had allegedly fostered a hostile and misogynistic workplace at SeaSpine and were defendants in a California state court gender discrimination class action, which settled in 2021 — information that was publicly available. When the market learned that Orthofix terminated the executives, the stock plummeted by more than 30%.

Block Inc. AML Securities Litigation

Gonsalves v. Block, Inc., et al. (N.D. Cal.): Cohen Milstein, as co-lead counsel, represents investors in a putative securities class action against Block, Inc., a financial technology company best known for its Square and Cash App platforms. Investors allege that Block and Block’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, and CFO/COO, Amrita Ahuja, misled investors about the strength of Block’s compliance protocols and the reliability of its reported user metrics for the Cash App platform. As investors came to realize that Cash App’s reported growth was illusory, Block’s stock price plummeted more than 80%, erasing billions of dollars in market value.

Coinbase Securities Litigation

State of Oregon v. Coinbase, Inc., et al (Circ. Crt., Multnomah Cnty. Or.): Cohen Milstein represents the Oregon Attorney General in an enforcement action against Coinbase for, allegedly, illegally soliciting and facilitating the sale of unregistered securities in the form of numerous cryptocurrencies to Oregon residents. In addition to depriving Oregonians of important disclosures and protections about these highly speculative investments, Oregonians have allegedly incurred substantial losses.

Past Cases

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In re Parmalat Securities Litigation

In re Parmalat Securities Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein, as co-lead counsel, represented European institutional investors in this high-profile securities fraud class action. Plaintiffs claimed that Parmalat, the company’s executives, accountants, and outside auditors, Deloitte & Touche Tohmatsu, Deloitte S.p.A., Deloitte & Touche – U.S., and Grant Thornton, S.p.A., helped facilitate a massive Ponzi scheme – one of the largest corporate frauds in history. Cohen Milstein successfully negotiated several settlements totaling over $90 million. The court remarked that plaintiffs’ counsel “did a wonderful job [. . .] I wish I had counsel this good in front of me in every case.”

In re SanDisk Securities Litigation

In re: SanDisk LLC Securities Litigation (N.D. Cal.): Cohen Milstein represented investors in this certified securities class action against SanDisk, and the company’s former CEO and CFO. Plaintiffs alleged that the defendants made false and misleading statements regarding SanDisk’s supposed success integrating a key corporate acquisition for its all-important enterprise solid-state drive business and the strength of SanDisk’s enterprise sales team and strategy, among other things. A host of undisclosed problems with the integration and the enterprise business, however, caused SanDisk’s enterprise revenue to fall, including revenue derived from the acquisition, and to badly miss internal sales forecasts. On October 23, 2019, the court granted final approval of a $50 million settlement.

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.