Bernstein Liebhard LLP is honored to announce that the firm has been named to The National Law Journal’s “Plaintiffs’ Hot List” for the eleventh consecutive year.  The firm has been named to the “Plaintiffs’ Hot List” every year since the list was first published in 2003.

The National Law Journal compiled this year’s list by selecting nineteen firms that have performed “exemplary, cutting edge work on the plaintiffs’ side.”  Of the firms named to the Hot List this year, Bernstein Liebhard is one of only two named for eleven straight years.

Every year The National Law Journal examines the plaintiffs’ bar’s most successful practices and asks its readers to nominate firms that have performed exemplary, cutting-edge work.  The Hot List features plaintiffs’ firms that obtained either substantial settlements or jury verdicts in the past year.  To be considered, firms needed at least one significant win and an impressive track record within the previous three to five years.

This year’s Hot List noted that “Bernstein Liebhard spends plenty of time at trial but helped strike some of the highest-profile settlements of 2012.”  Commenting on the firm’s work this year, Partner Stanley D. Bernstein stated that the firm “is proud of its work.  Our name adds value in corporate board rooms, but in the end, it’s not the name, it’s the work.”

The Hot List highlighted three of the firm’s cases:

  • In re Beacon Associates Litigation, No. 09 CIV 0777 (LBS) (AJP) (S.D.N.Y.):  As Investor Counsel, representing investors in hedge funds that invested with Bernard L. Madoff, the firm, working with lead counsel, Lowey, Dannenburg, Cohen & Hart, P.C., secured $219 million settlement for the class it represented.  The $219 million settlement, which resolves claims in the In re Beacon Associates Litigation and In re J.P. Jeanneret Associates. Inc., No. 09 CIV 3907 (CM) (AJP) (S.D.N.Y.) class actions, as well as additional lawsuits in federal and New York State court, including suits brought by the United States Department of Labor and the New York Attorney General.
  • In re Fannie Mae Securities Litigation, No. 04-1639 (FJL) (D.D.C.):  As co-lead counsel representing the lead plaintiffs the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, the firm helped obtain a $153 million settlement after nine years of litigation.  The settlement is the largest securities settlement in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since the passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act in 1998.
  • Roberts v. Tishman Speyer Properties, L.P., No. 100956/07 (N.Y. Sup. Ct.):  As co-lead counsel, the firm represented thousands of affected tenants of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village rental apartment complexes in Manhattan, who for many years have been illegally charged market-rate rents for apartments that should have been rent stabilized under New York City’s Rent Stabilization Law.  In April 2013, final approval was granted to a settlement of $68.75 million for the class, in addition to $76 million in past rent savings and refunds already received by the tenant class.