Attorneys | Jeffrey Smith | Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP

New York
270 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016

Phone:	212-545-4740
Fax:	212-545-4653
Email:	smith@whafh.com

Jeffrey G. Smith is a partner of the firm. He has substantial experience in complex civil litigation, including class and derivative actions and representation of investors in tender offer, merger, and takeover litigation.

Mr. Smith has focused much of his practice on investor and shareholder litigation and counseling, but also handles complex cases in other areas of the law including the Fair Labor Standards Act, state wage and hour law, and consumer deception statutes.

Recent representative cases where Mr. Smith served as lead or co-lead counsel include LaVoice v. Smith Barney, a class action in the Northern District of California settled in 2008 for over $106 million for stockbrokers who alleged unpaid overtime and improper expense deductions. That case was the first of several similar class action lawsuits Mr. Smith led that, together, recovered in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars in unpaid wages and unreimbursed expenses through 2011.
He also served as lead counsel in three mutual fund cases consolidated under In re Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. Research Reports Securities Litigation in the Southern District of New York which recovered over $40 million for mutual fund investors in 2007; Berger v. Compaq Computer Corp., a class action in the Southern District of Texas under section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that recovered $29 million for defrauded investors in 2002; Kurzweil v. Philip Morris, a 1997 securities class action in the Southern District of New York that recovered over $123 million for defrauded stockholders; QVC Network v. Paramount Communications Inc., a 1993 shareholder class action in the Delaware Chancery Court that established new law in one of the most celebrated of take-over cases and resulted in an increase of over $2 billion received by Paramount stockholders.

In Finnan v. L.F. Rothschild & Co. (1989), Mr. Smith served as lead counsel in the first certified class action under the Federal Plant Closing law (the WARN Act) and recovered $3.5 million for illegally discharged brokerage house employees. In addition, in Moran v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. (Allstate), a class action in California state courts in 1988, Mr. Smith and three co-counsel recovered over $30 million for Allstate Insurance agents who were not being properly compensated under state employee expense reimbursement statutes.

Mr. Smith frequently lectures on corporate governance issues and class action recoveries to professional groups of pension and benefit fund trustees and investment advisors as well as to graduate and undergraduate business student groups. He is the principal author of an article entitled "FLSA Collective Actions and New York Labor Law Class Actions: A Question of Pre-emption," which appeared in Class Action Reports, vol. 27, #4 (October 17, 2006). He regularly serves as a moot court judge for the American Bar Association and at New York University Law School.

He is rated AV, the highest rating possible from Martindale-Hubbell®, the country's foremost legal directory and has been selected for inclusion in the New York Metro Super Lawyers® listing every year since its first publication in 2006.

Mr. Smith is admitted to practice in New York State and in California as well as before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Circuits, the United States Tax Court, and the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the Southern, Central and Northern Districts of California and the Districts of Colorado and Nebraska.

He is a member of The New York City, New York State, and American Bar Associations; the State Bar of California; the Federal Bar Council; and the American Association for Justice.

Mr. Smith holds his law degree from the Yale Law School, where he served as a teaching assistant for the Trial Practice course and a student supervisor in the Yale Legal Services Organization, a clinical program. He has an associate’s degree from Dutchess Community College and a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and he also holds a master's degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.