S&C won “Impact Case of the Year” and S&C Co-Chair Robert Giuffra Jr. won “Securities Litigator of the Year” at Benchmark Litigation’s 2024 U.S. Awards. The awards recognize “the country’s most distinguished litigators and their firms for their exemplary work over the past 12 months.” Nominees are selected after extensive interviews with litigators, dispute-resolution specialists and clients.
S&C was awarded “Impact Case of the Year” for securing a major victory for Goldman Sachs from the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit in a $13 billion securities case, with the court reversing class certification after 13 years of litigation and establishing important guardrails to the “inflation-maintenance” theory of securities fraud. Following this win, plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the suit with prejudice, ending the long-running litigation. The S&C team, led by Bob, included David Rein, Ben Walker, Julia Malkina and Morgan Ratner. Bob was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer’s Litigation Daily for this victory.
Bob won “Securities Litigator of the Year” for achieving important victories for clients in a range of complex securities litigations. In addition to the Goldman Sachs win, he represented:
- UBS in an agreement to settle all claims brought by the DOJ under FIRREA concerning UBS’s issuance, underwriting and sale of residential mortgage-backed securities in 2006 and 2007
- Ericsson and its senior executive in obtaining dismissal with prejudice of a securities fraud action in the Eastern District of New York based on allegations of improper payments made in Iraq and other countries
- Allianz SE’s U.S. subsidiary, Allianz Global Investors U.S., in resolving investigations by the SEC and DOJ into Structured Alpha hedge funds managed by Allianz and settling a series of related individual and putative investor class actions
S&C is widely recognized as a leading litigation firm. Last year, The American Lawyer and The New York Law Journal selected S&C as “Litigation Department of the Year” for Financial Services. Chambers USA ranks S&C’s General Commercial Litigation, Corporate Crime & Investigations, Securities Litigation and White Collar Crime & Government Investigations Practices in Band 1.
Bob has been consistently recognized as a leading litigator in the United States over the past decade. The American Lawyer selected him as “Litigator of the Year” in 2014 and as “Litigator of the Week” eight times since June 2011, most recently in August 2023 for the Goldman Sachs securities case win. He is a ten-time Law360 MVP, the most for any lawyer since Law360 started naming MVPs.