Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca LLP

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Securities Fraud and Corporate Governance

Our firm is proud to have been involved in some of the most significant securities cases in U.S. history. With our Washington expertise, we were involved in the famous Enron and WorldCom securities fraud cases, which involved billions of dollars of financial losses to shareholders. On the legislative front, we played an instrumental role in lobbying Congress against the inclusion of the proposed anti-investor provisions in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1996. With two former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyers, our firm has enjoyed real success in the realm of securities litigation and advocacy.

Corporate Malfeasance

Enron

We served as Washington counsel in the Enron-related securities litigation In re Enron Corp. Sec., Derivative, which recovered over $7 billion on behalf of the injured parties, the largest recovery ever obtained for investors victimized by corporate fraud. With litigation led by the Regents of the University of California, the firm worked on a host of projects in this mammoth securities case.

We worked on a day-to-day basis with lead counsel on matters of critical importance to the case. The firm prepared memoranda on a number of specific legal topics, protected the interests of Enron investors before Congress, especially in the Congressional debate leading to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, and consulted on many public and policy aspects of this litigation. Our firm wrote an amicus brief on behalf of a number of consumer organizations in a U.S. Supreme Court case that was related to the Enron case (StoneRidge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. and Motorola, Inc.). We also assisted Enron class members in their efforts to persuade the U.S. government to take a pro-investor position in StoneRidge.

WorldCom

CGL assisted lead counsel and the lead plaintiff, the New York Common Public Retirement Fund, in the enormous securities class action In re WorldCom, Inc., Securities Litigation. First, we served as Washington counsel, monitoring relevant Congressional and regulatory developments, where we succeeded in getting a crucial amendment on securities fraud into the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Second, a former partner served as a trial consultant in the 2005 trial against Arthur Anderson. The plaintiff's team collected in excess of $6 billion, the second largest fraud recovery in history.

Pleading Standard Under Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The firm filed an amicus curiae brief in Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights on behalf of Public Citizen and the Center for Study of Responsive Law (a Ralph Nader organization) addressing the heightened pleading standard under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA).

We urged the Court to interpret that standard to ensure that the PSLRA's pleading standard comports with the burden of proof and to guarantee the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury.

Securities Fraud and Corporate Governance

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