Brian J. Robbins, the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of the Firm, has been an active litigator of shareholder, employee, consumer, and small business rights for several years. In addition to prosecuting actions for which he has principal responsibility, Mr. Robbins oversees and coordinates the work of the Firm's nearly 50 employees and all its litigation departments. As a litigator, Mr. Robbins has negotiated several noteworthy settlements of complex actions and successfully argued several noteworthy legal issues.
For example, Mr. Robbins was the lead negotiator for the derivative plaintiffs in Harbor Finance Partners v. McGhan, et al., No. H-02-0761 (S.D. Tex.), litigation filed on behalf of Hanover Compressor Company. The "groundbreaking" and "unprecedented" Hanover settlement resulted in, among other things, a $26.5 million payment to the company, the return of 2.5 million shares to the company, the appointment of two shareholder nominated directors and the agreement to rotate the company's auditing firm. See This Settlement Raises the Governance Bar; Hanover Compressor's Landmark Agreement with Shareholders to Embrace Major Corporate Reforms Could Have Profound Repercussions, Stephanie Anderson Forest, BusinessWeek Online, May 15, 2003. Additionally, Mr. Robbins, as sole lead counsel, recently settled In re OM Group, Inc. Derivative Litig., Case No. 1:03CV0020 (N.D. Ohio). As part of this resolution, Mr. Robbins helped secure $29 million for OM Group, the termination of OM Group's long term CEO, the addition of two shareholder nominated directors, and numerous other highly beneficial corporate governance matters. Mr. Robbins negotiated another groundbreaking settlement to resolve In re Dynegy, Inc. Derivative Litig., Lead Case No. 2002-25250 (Harris County, TX, 164th Judicial District). This settlement acknowledged the role of the litigation in implementing extensive corporate governance reforms including: replacement of 11 members of the Board of Directors and several key officers, adoption of extensive measures specifically designed to increase the independence of the Board of Directors and its various committees, and the establishment of new committees and senior positions to specifically enhance ethics and compliance efforts, as well as the integrity of the Company's financial reports, and assisted the company in securing a $150 million benefit, and implemented several critical and necessary corporate governance practices. Mr. Robbins also served in a Co-Lead Counsel capacity in Larret v. Robertson, et al., Lead Case No. GIC754696 (S.D. Super. Ct.), a shareholder derivative action brought on behalf of MP3.com, Inc. ("MP3") which resulted in MP3's adoption of extensive corporate governance measures designed to specifically increase the independence of the board of directors and its committees and the transparency of any trading by insiders. In another shareholder derivative action settled through Mr. Robbins' efforts and the efforts of the Firm, the Honorable Robert S. Lasnik stated:
"Well, I did review the papers here and I think you've actually set the bar kind of high for future settlements. This looks like an excellent result for the various class members in both the derivative action and the other action.... And it's to the credit of the lawyers that they were able to achieve this result before a lot of discovery and a lot of expenses were undertaken.... And so, I would be quite delighted and satisfied to make the necessary findings that this is an excellent settlement for plaintiffs."
In re Cutter & Buck Sec. Litig., No. C02-1948L, Hearing on Settlement Transcript at 6-7 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 2, 2003).
Mr. Robbins has also negotiated several very highly beneficial settlements of securities fraud class action lawsuits. In a recent securities fraud class action in San Diego, In re Titan, Inc. Sec. Litig., Master File No. 04-CV-0676-LAB (NLS) (S.D. Cal.), Mr. Robbins, along with his Firm, serving in a Co-Lead Counsel capacity, were able to secure a $61.5 million settlement on behalf of the Class. This amounted to half of the estimated damages to the class and far exceeded the normal settlement gained in this type of case. It was also one of the largest securities fraud class action settlements in San Diego's history. Mr. Robbins, as the lead attorney for his prior firm in Garza, et al. v. J.D. Edwards & Co., et al., Case No. 99-1744 (D. Col.), also helped secure over a $15 million recovery for a class of purchasers of J.D. Edwards & Co. stock.
Likewise, Mr. Robbins has also helped settle numerous other complex class action lawsuits. For example, Mr. Robbins played a pivotal role in Supnick v. Amazon.com, Inc., et al., Case No. C-00-0221-P (W.D. Wash.), litigation which resulted in a $3.8 million cash recovery for the class and critical injunctive relief protecting the privacy of class members and other users of the Internet.
Mr. Robbins has also been at the forefront of litigation on several novel legal topics. For example, as Co-Lead Counsel in a class action brought on behalf of Internet users who had allegedly had their privacy violated because of the design of certain web pages, Mr. Robbins successfully briefed an opposition to a motion to dismiss brought by defendant Website operator Intuit, Inc. ("Intuit"). The issue, whether Intuit violated sections of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act through the manipulation of cookies placed on its visitors' computers, was a novel and untested application of the law. The court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss plaintiffs' cause of action based upon a violation of 18 U.S.C. §2701, et seq., which prohibits unauthorized access to facilities where electronic communication services are provided. See In re Intuit Privacy Litig., 138 F. Supp. 2d 1272 (C.D. Cal. 2001). This success eventually secured a settlement that resulted in numerous privacy protections provided to the class and future users of the quicken.com Website.
In In re Toys R Us, Inc. Privacy Litig., Mr. Robbins successfully opposed a motion to dismiss claims brought under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by Toys R Us, Inc. and Coremetrics, Inc. in an action alleging surreptitious monitoring of the activities of the users of the toysrus.com website. Despite the highly technical nature of these types of claims, Mr. Robbins was able to help defeat a motion to dismiss a 18 U.S.C. §2520 claim against Coremetrics and a 18 U.S.C. §1030 claim against Toys R Us and Coremetrics. See In re Toys R Us, Inc. Privacy Litig., No. 00-CV-2746, 2001 WL 34517252 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 9, 2001). The upholding of these claims against website providers was believed to be the first of their kind. This success lead to a settlement that provided significantly enhanced privacy protections to future users of the toysrus.com Website.
Mr. Robbins has also successfully briefed two issues of first impression as to whether removal of a shareholder derivative action to federal court based upon federal question grounds was proper. In a shareholder derivative action brought on behalf of JDS Uniphase Corporation ("JDS"), the defendants removed the case claiming that a shareholder derivative action based on similar factual allegations as a securities fraud class action brought against JDS and certain of its officers was not an "exclusively derivative" action under the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 ("SLUSA") and thus SLUSA authorized removal of the action. Mr. Robbins, however, successfully argued that the similarity of the factual allegations could not alter the derivative nature of the action and the case was therefore not removable under SLUSA and should be remanded. See Coykendall v. Kaplan, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22483 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 1, 2002). As Co-Lead Counsel in a shareholder derivative action brought on behalf of L90, Inc. ("L90"), Mr. Robbins, on another issue of first impression, was also successful in arguing that the removal provisions of SLUSA were not applicable to a shareholder derivative action because that action also included a class action claim seeking to protect the voting rights of L90's shareholders on equitable grounds. See Shen v. Bohan, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22485 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 16, 2002). Mr. Robbins has also successfully briefed to the Supreme Court of Texas that a trial court's determination of whether a plaintiff has adequately alleged that a demand to initiate suit upon a company's board of directors would have been a futile and useless act is not an issue justifying interlocutory review. See In re Dynegy, Inc., No. 03-0768, Order (Sup. Ct. Tex. Sept. 8, 2003).
Currently, Mr. Robbins is also acting as lead counsel or as an executive committee member in several other complex litigation matters. Mr. Robbins is also commonly acknowledged as a prominent and respected litigator in his field as evidenced by a recent invitation by the Washington State Bar Association to be a panelist for "After the Storm: Securities and Corporate Litigation in the Post-Sarbanes World" at its 26th Annual Northwest Securities Institute and lectured at the International Class Actions Conference in January of 2007 on the topic of Discovery and eDiscovery Issues. Mr. Robbins was also named one of San Diego's Super Lawyers of 2006.
Mr. Robbins graduated in only two and one-half years from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1993. Mr. Robbins then received his law degree from the Vanderbilt School of Law in 1997. While at Vanderbilt, Mr. Robbins received the top score in constitutional law, corporate law, corporate and securities transactions, and soviet law and was a research assistant for two very well respected corporate and securities law professors: (1) Professor Donald C. Langevoort, the Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Professor at Vanderbilt University School of Law, former Special Counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the Office of the General Counsel, co-author, with Professors James Cox and Robert Hillman, of Securities Regulation: Cases and Materials, the author of Insider Trading: Regulation, Enforcement and Prevention, and author of many law review articles, a number of which seek to incorporate insights from social psychology and behavioral economics into the study of corporate and securities law and legal ethics. Professor Langevoort also has testified numerous times before Congressional committees on issues relating to insider trading and securities litigation reform; and (2) Professor Larry D. Soderquist, one of the best known and most respected corporate and securities law professors in America, who has authored numerous books and articles on these subjects, including Understanding the Securities Laws, the most widely distributed book of its kind. Professor Soderquist also was the Director of Vanderbilt's Corporate and Securities Law Institute. After graduating from Vanderbilt Law School, Mr. Robbins received his LL.M. in Securities and Financial Regulation from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1998. Mr. Robbins is licensed to practice in the State of California, the State of Connecticut, and the United States District Courts for the Central, Northern and Southern Districts of California, the District of Colorado and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
