The primary goals remain winning the case and/or persuading regulators to stand down. Because insurance policies are foisting more of the initial litigation costs onto insureds, companies and their management have also begun focusing upon how to most efficiently deliver positive results.
Kelley Drye’s securities litigation group understands and responds to these new demands and needs. Our group is currently led by experienced veterans who helped steer companies and regulated professionals through crises in the dot-com bust and financial crisis eras. Clients across a broad range of industries rely on our nationwide team to provide them with a deep and talented bench of seasoned trial lawyers, former prosecutors, Securities and Exchange Commission officials and other government regulators, including the cofounder of the SEC’s post-Madoff Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA) and the principal editor of Business Litigation in Federal Courts (4th Ed.).
Our team has successfully tried dozens of cases before juries, administrative law judges and arbitrators. We have successfully negotiated favorable civil and criminal resolutions with federal and state authorities and won countless motions to dismiss private class actions. We have been at the forefront of securities litigation for decades—in fact one of the very first stockholder cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, Fourth Nat’l Bank v. Francklyn, 120 U.S. 747 (1887), was successfully argued by William Allen Butler, a then-senior partner at the firm.
Our team serves clients in all types of securities cases: securities fraud class and individual actions, SEC investigations and enforcement action defense, derivative suits against directors and officers, and criminal securities and insider trading cases brought by federal and state regulators and prosecutors. We regularly handle claims brought under Sections 10(b), 14(a), 18 and 20(a) and Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Sections 11, 12 and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, Sections 206(1), (2) and (4) and Rule 206(4)-8 of the Investment Advisers Act, and state blue-sky laws. We also often represent clients in connection with formal and informal investigations by the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and state attorneys general.
Throughout these actions, Kelley Drye attorneys put client service at the forefront of everything we do. From the development of the initial strategy through the potential recoupment of defense costs from insurance, indemnity or elsewhere, the client’s goals remain at the center of all that we do. With an unwavering focus on our clients, combined with our extensive experience and creative problem-solving, we work every day to earn and retain the trust and confidence of our clients facing some of the most sensitive and challenging securities claims.