U.S. Securities Litigation

Wolf Haldenstein has been advocating for investors for 50 years. The Firm has recovered more than $7 billion for shareholders.

Wolf Haldenstein’s U.S Securities Litigation Group consists of U.S. Securities Litigation , Shareholder Derivative Litigation , Individual Litigation, and Opt-Out Litigation. The Firm is nationally recognized for litigating complex securities class actions and shareholder disputes and has achieved significant recoveries and protections for investors. We help institutional and individual investors protect their assets and recover their losses; compel significant corporate governance reforms; and increase shareholder value by challenging corporate transactions.

For its Institutional and Family Office clients, Wolf Haldenstein offers a secure and customizable on-line portfolio monitoring system.

Securities Litigation

Wolf Haldenstein has a successful history of helping individual and institutional investors — including public pension funds, family offices, Taft-Hartley funds, and health and welfare benefit funds — protect their assets and recover losses. The Firm has litigated complex securities class actions for fifty years and has recouped more than $7 billion on behalf of investors, while also obtaining significant corporate governance reforms.

Wolf Haldenstein’s attorneys have extensive experience litigating securities law claims in both federal and state court including claims of securities violations, insider trading, and financial and accounting malfeasance. Wolf Haldenstein has obtained significant securities litigation recoveries from some of the nation’s largest corporations, such as AIG, Goldman Sachs & Co., and JP Morgan. Courts across the country have recognized Wolf Haldenstein’s experience and skill in achieving significant recoveries and innovative victories in securities and shareholder rights actions.

Shareholder Derivative Litigation

Wolf Haldenstein protects institutional and individual investors — including public pension funds, Taft-Hartley funds, health and welfare benefit funds, and family offices — from corporate wrongdoing by litigating derivative claims to recover damages and for corporate governance reform in response to mismanagement and corporate abuse. In addition to recovering hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, the Firm also has created billions of dollars of increased shareholder value by achieving significant corporate governance reforms.

Wolf Haldenstein has served as lead counsel in dozens of cases in federal and state cases challenging mismanagement and corporate abuse to the ultimate benefit of its shareholders. Wolf Haldenstein’s successful litigation of derivative and corporate governance cases has resulted in billions of dollars of increased value for company shareholders in merger and acquisition cases as well as important corporate governance changes.

In addition to achieving significant monetary value for company shareholders, Wolf Haldenstein has also achieved significant corporate governance reforms for companies such as Tyson Foods, General Motors, and Verisign.

Individual Litigation

In some circumstances, a family office or public or private management fund may be uniquely affected by adverse events that give rise to individual (rather than representative) litigation.

Wolf Haldenstein provides individual litigation services to clients on a case-by-case basis.  Such services may be offered on a contingent fee or hourly basis.

Opt-Out Litigation

As its name implies, when a state or federal class action is commenced for a particular investment in a client’s portfolio, the client may wish to pursue its individual claim rather than seek to take an active role as a representative plaintiff or merely a passive role as a class member.

The decision to request exclusion from (or “opt out” of) a class action to pursue individual litigation is dependent upon a variety of factors, including the size of the client’s loss, the reason(s) for the loss, and the nature and status of the pending class action.

A client may elect to opt out of the class action and pursue individual litigation while the action is being litigated or after a proposed settlement of the action has been reached.

• Opt-out litigation offers two potential advantages over participation as an absent class member in a settled class action. First, opt-out litigation often recovers a greater percentage of the individual client’s loss than may be achieved in a class action.  Second, the attorneys’ fees and expenses for opt-out litigation are often proportionately smaller than the fees and expenses awarded in a class action.  Consequently, a client often achieves a greater net recovery through opt-out litigation than members of the class action achieve on the same claims.
• Opt-out litigation is usually handled on a contingent fee basis, and the firm’s fees and reimbursement of expenses are the subject a private agreement with its client. The burden on the client in such cases is usually modest, but they can be more substantial depending upon the nature and timing of the opt-out.