2011 CLASS ACTION LITIGATION LAWSUIT

• In 2011, the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System (ATRS) filed a class action litigation lawsuit was against State Street and Trust.
• Labaton Sucharow LLP, Thornton Law Firm LLP, and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP served as the lead counsel for the plaintiff.
• State Street Corp. had acted as custodian bank for public pension funds and was responsible for foreign exchange trading.
• The company was accused of overcharging the pension fund clients.
• In November 2016, the court approved a final settlement amounting to $300 million.
• In March 2017, the court appointed a special master to "review the fee and expense application and to issue a report and recommendation" after being notified of "certain inadvertent errors in the motion for fees and expenses."
• The dispute initially arose from a series of reports by Boston Globe where it questioned the accuracy of law firms' billing records and the suspicious payments where a lawyer called Michael Bradley was paid $500 an hour work totaling to $400,000.
• The report revealed that Michael Bradley normally works at $53 per hour as a public defender.
• Additionally, it was discovered that the lead counsel overstated the value of the work by 10% which the retired judge stated as a red flag.
• Damon Chargois did not work on the case but served as an intermediary between Labaton and ATRS but received an undisclosed $4.1 million fee as payment.
• It was revealed that the involvement of Chargois was concealed from other lawyers and most of the co-counsels.
• A Columbia Law Professor stated that this kind of arrangement showed the shoddy market of "buying and selling plaintiffs in securities class actions" which was dubious and arranged under the table.
• As of the latest report, Labaton Sucharow and the two law firms have agreed to return the $4.8 million to plaintiffs.
• Additionally, as part of the agreement with Rosen, Labaton agreed to conduct internal reforms and compliance with the emerging best practices.
• Labaton has also adopted the policy of banning bare referral practice with other lawyers.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

Helpful Findings

• In 2013, 3 billion Yahoo accounts were compromised, with data stolen including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.
• Yahoo and Verizon Communications Inc. have reported to have settled for a $117.5 million pay-out due to data breaches.
• Target, Sony's PlayStation Network, and Home Depot are the top three data breaches based on the amount of monetary settlement each company had to pay.
• In 2014, "a group of banks, credit unions and other financial institutions filed suit against the retailer in 2015, seeking payment for the cost of replacing credit and debit cards and reimbursing funds to customers who were allegedly victimized after a breach, which affected 8.1 million cards."
• "After the retailer filed a motion to dismiss, parties entered mediation and negotiated a settlement. Pursuant to the agreement, the retailer will establish a $5.2 million settlement fund to be distributed to class members as well as pay attorneys’ fees and expenses. The company also agreed to change several practices related to data security."
• "TD Bank has agreed to a multi-state settlement in the wake of a 2012 data breach involving the loss of two backup tapes that may have exposed personally identifiable information about 260,000 of the bank's 8 million U.S. customers."
• In 2013, Target agreed to a settlement to compensate for the stolen information during the data breach. The settlement gave Target 180 days to “develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive information security program,” but most of the changes that the settlement demands have already been adopted by the retailer.

Research Strategy:

Industry-wide breach in australia

•  Australia’s banks have started notifying customers in February 2019 that many of the accounts across different banks may have been included in an "industry-wide" data breach that involved an ASX-listed property valuation firm.
•  The main banks included in this breach are CBA, ANZ, and NAB.
•  The targeted accounts were mostly those regarding properties and affected property valuations.
• According to the reports, some clients were international holders (including US properties) which is why the so-far estimated impact might also have a US reach.

Massive mortgage and loan data leak on elasticsearch server

•  In January 2019, millions of documents were leaked after an exposed Elasticsearch server was discovered without a password. The documents carried highly sensitive financial data regarding tens of thousands of private clients who took out loans or mortgages in the last ten years with U.S. financial institutions.
•  The leak was traced back to the Texas-based data and analytics company called Ascension.
• The leaked data contained 23,000 pages of documents that carried borrowers’ very sensitive personal information which is the type of information that the borrowers would normally provide for obtaining a mortgage.
•  24 million financial and banking documents, which represented tens of thousands of loans and mortgages that included some of the biggest banks in the U.S., had been found leaked online after a server security lapse. The security server in question was run on the Elasticsearch database and contained over 10 years of decade's worth of data.

773 million email addresses leaked

• Also in January 2019, nearly 773 million records, which included email addresses and passwords for private bank accounts, were exposed in a series of data breaches. The leak was discovered by the security researcher Troy Hunt and security researchers at Krebs on Security.
• The collection of files included the unique email addresses totaling at 772,904,991 different accounts. 
• According to Market Watch, millions of passwords get dumped online pretty often, and private clients are advised to turn on two-step verification of their email and banking accounts.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

CHANGES IN THE plaintiff's lawyer or firm

• According to Stuart Grant of Grant & Eisenhofer; the Delaware shareholder litigation firm, in recent years “there’s definitely been a shift of who is been bringing these cases.” Additionally, there have been fewer promising cases recently, because the stock market has been mostly rising over the last few years and the increased vigilance of audit firms.
• Stuart Grant stated that in the past few years' law advances have been substantially reversed, especially in the Delaware’s Supreme Court due to "erected ever-higher barriers to shareholder claims against corporations and their boards, particularly with respect to mergers and acquisitions.
• In addition, Grant claimed that it seems to be the end of appraisal claims and arbitrage for now.
• According to Steven Vasilaros, a personal injury plaintiff attorney in Florida “Technology changed the entire landscape”. Vasilaros said plaintiff firms have seen the largest change recently in the ability of lawyers to advertise using technology which has made the plaintiff field more manageable and raised the quality of legal services to all clients.
• A 2012 LexisNexis report stated that Boris Feldman; a plaintiff firm claimed there have been changes in the plaintiffs' bar where in 2012 "there was a rise in multi-jurisdiction litigation, proliferation of demand letters, the rise of derivative litigation paralleling shareholder class action lawsuits along with the trend of automatic filing of litigation when a merger is announced and the rise in actions under Section 220 of the Delaware Code."
• The current United States administration has presented challenges for plaintiff-side attorneys where in various cases Trump has intervened to engage in frivolous, retaliatory litigation. In addition, there was a noticeable reduction in class action lawsuits in 2017.
• Also, there is likely to be more discussions on the fate of the Further Asbestos Claim Transparency Act "which requires public disclosures of payments made to plaintiff’s by the trusts that pay out asbestos exposure claims made against bankrupt companies" and restrictions on the transfer of federal cases to state courts.
• Plaintiff firms have faced recent changes in plaintiff laws and reforms wherein changes to the threshold for motor vehicle accident claims are changing the landscape. Additionally, the government applied a deductible to claims that meet a threshold of $30,000 as at Aug. 1, 2015. However, the threshold has increased each year because of inflation.

Types of cases being handled AND CHANGES IN IT FROM PAST YEARS

• The size of securities class action settlements rose significantly in 2018 compared to recent years.
• The ISS Securities Class Action Services report states that the type of cases being handled by most plaintiff attorney's in 2018 includes "allegations of the employment of manipulative or deceptive practices, allegations relating to merger transactions, civil liabilities based on alleged false registration statements, allegations pertaining to GAAP reporting, initial public offerings, and public offerings."
• In year 2009, the number of securities class action lawsuits declined and the media claimed this is because the plaintiffs are "running out of people to sue." Also, it was observed that because of diminished volatility in the stock market, plaintiff lawsuit fillings have reduced.
• Most the cases that were handled in 2009 related to the backlog of cases for corporate litigation.
• In 2017, the number of cases related to securities suit settlements by the plaintiff firms was reduced. In 2017, the aggregate amount of monetary shareholder recoveries was $2.1 billion compared to $7 billion recovered in 2016 and this was the lowest yearly total in more than 10 years.

How plaintiff's firms come to take on certain cases/class actions

• According to Steven Vasilaros, in recent times more liberty is available for the lawyers to take by cases by advertising themselves and the advent of legal advertising has clearly revolutionized the legal world.
• The ISS Securities top ranked plaintiff firm; Bernstein, Litowitz law firm advertises its expertise in securities litigation and presents its latest awards & recognition, and customer testimonials within its corporate brochure. Additionally, the company's website presents its past success track records from more than 20 years in the area of securities litigation.
• Another ISS Securities top ranked plaintiff firm; Pomerantz, promotes its notable success records on their website related to achievements in securities litigation along with there settled cases details.

Insights regarding plaintiff law firm focus areas

• The ISS Securities Class Action Services report presented two law firms whose total 2018 securities class action lawsuit settlements exceeded $1 billion; Pomerantz law firm with total of $3.272 billion in plaintiff settlements and Bernstein, Litowitz, with $1.351 billion in plaintiff settlements.
• The focus areas of Pomerantz law firm are "securities litigation, antitrust litigation, corporate governance, and portfolio monitoring case evaluation."
• The focus areas of Bernstein, Litowitz are "securities fraud litigation, corporate governance and shareholders rights litigation."

Research Strategy: