Carol C. Villegas

The Lawyer Who Remembers Why

A long case accumulates decisions that rarely appear together in any one filing. Counsel chooses which public statements belong in the complaint, which witnesses can test the theory, which documents should anchor an examination, and which issues must be preserved for appeal. Years later, those choices determine whether the case can withstand a narrower ruling without losing its center.

A durable case therefore needs more than a document repository. It needs a map of decisions: which allegation each document supports, what alternative explanation the defense advances, which witness can authenticate or explain the record, and what a prior ruling left unresolved. That map allows a new lawyer, expert, or appellate team to understand not only what the file contains, but why the litigation took its present shape.

Villegas has described the advantage of remaining with a matter from its beginning. Knowing the documents is only part of it. She remembers why a theory was selected, why another was discarded, what a witness changed, and where the evidence remains vulnerable. That strategic memory allows a team to respond when a court trims the pleading, an expert changes an assumption, or discovery produces a record different from the one anticipated at filing.

At Labaton Keller Sucharow, Villegas is a partner, a member of the Executive Committee, and the leader of one of the firm's securities-litigation teams — the youngest litigation team leader in the firm's history. She also co-leads the firm's consumer-protection and data-privacy litigation. She began as an assistant district attorney in Richmond County's Supreme Court Bureau, taking cases to trial early, and later handled federal litigation at King & Spalding.

A first-generation Colombian American, Villegas earned her bachelor's degree with honors from New York University and her law degree from NYU School of Law. She is admitted in New York and speaks Spanish. Within the firm, she serves as Chief of Compliance and chairs the Women's Initiative — roles that place trial work beside decisions about staffing, client responsibility, conflicts, document handling, and the professional systems that keep a large practice reliable.

Building the Catalent Record

The Catalent securities case — City of Warwick Retirement System v. Catalent, Inc. — began, as securities cases must, with incomplete public information. Investors alleged that the company made misleading statements about operational problems, costs, production, and capacity at several facilities. Before ordinary merits discovery, counsel had to decide whether public disclosures, market events, regulatory material, and the company's own statements supported a claim strong enough to justify years of litigation.

A securities complaint must stand on the information available before merits discovery begins. The initial theory must connect an asserted misstatement to the information later revealed and to the investor loss attributed to that revelation. It must also identify the speaker, the timing, and the contemporaneous basis for alleging falsity or knowledge, with the particularity the PSLRA demands. A broad complaint can bury the strongest allegation; a weak one can consume years before the court or the evidence exposes its limits. Villegas begins with a theory that can be tested against later documents and testimony.

Case selection also carries a client responsibility. A lead plaintiff undertakes duties to the proposed class and must supervise litigation that may last for years. Before filing, counsel must test whether the alleged disclosure, corrective event, loss theory, available witnesses, and likely discovery justify that commitment. Selectivity concentrates resources on a theory capable of surviving the pleading standard and becoming a provable case rather than merely a plausible complaint.

Villegas helped carry the facility-operations theory into documents, witnesses, market evidence, and expert analysis. The record connected the challenged statements to the later disclosures and the investor losses asserted by the class.

The parties reached a $78 million cash settlement. The federal court granted final approval on June 22, 2026, after notice and review of the allocation and administration terms.

LifeLock on Appeal and Remand

Avila v. LifeLock concerned statements about LifeLock's identity-theft-protection services, including the timing and operation of its alerts, set against the background of the company's enforcement history with the Federal Trade Commission.

The appeal depended on a carefully built pleading-stage record: the complaint, the incorporated material, the public statements, and the governing rules for falsity, materiality, and loss. Villegas argued the appeal, and in August 2019 the Ninth Circuit revived key investor claims and returned them to the district court. The team had secured a renewed path to discovery, focused the case on the strongest surviving theory, and placed the investors in position to test that theory against internal documents and testimony.

After remand, Villegas and the team turned the appellate ruling into a focused discovery plan. They moved from defending the complaint's inferences to testing the restored claims against internal documents, witness testimony, and the defendants' factual account. That transition required precise identification of the evidence capable of proving the surviving theory and a chronology aligned with the Ninth Circuit's ruling. The renewed merits record became negotiating strength.

The parties reached a $20 million agreement in March 2020 — months after the appellate decision — and the district court granted final approval that July.

What Discovery Must Preserve

Securities discovery can deliver millions of pages without delivering clarity. Emails, forecasts, accounting records, board materials, customer data, and deposition testimony arrive from different custodians and different periods. The trial lawyer's task is to connect each market statement to what the company knew, how the information moved, who made the decision, and what changed when the truth emerged. That chronology determines which documents and witnesses can support the pleaded theory.

The same work shapes expert testimony. Economists may address market efficiency, price impact, loss causation, and damages. Industry or accounting specialists may explain the operational evidence. Counsel must know where an expert assumption rests on a contested witness, where a document supplies firmer ground, and where the legal question remains outside the expert's assignment.

The same record governs settlement judgment. Villegas builds negotiations around developed evidence, class proof, damages analysis, trial readiness, and administration. That discipline allows investor clients to evaluate a defined fund on a mature record, and it supports resolutions capable of surviving notice, final approval, and distribution. Her securities results reflect it: alongside Catalent's $78 million, her matters include the $73 million Nielsen Holdings settlement, the $60 million Oak Street Health settlement, and the $39 million World Wrestling Entertainment settlement, among others.

Flo Health to a Jury Verdict

The Flo Health litigation placed Villegas's method inside a technical system operating far from any earnings call. Users alleged that intimate menstruation, fertility, and pregnancy information entered into the Flo app was transmitted through embedded software tools to outside technology companies without valid consent. The case required the plaintiffs' team to explain, step by step, how data moved from a private entry on a telephone into advertising and analytics systems.

Trial began in federal court in San Francisco on July 21, 2025. Villegas and Michael P. Canty led the Labaton trial team.

The evidence included testimony from women who used the app, internal communications, technical documentation, and expert explanations of the data flows. Flo Health resolved the remaining claims against it during trial. On August 1, the jury unanimously found Meta liable under the California Invasion of Privacy Act for its role in the unauthorized collection and commercial use of the health information — one of the first jury verdicts holding a major technology company accountable for its handling of consumer health data.

Villegas's team also secured agreements totaling $59.5 million with Flo Health, Google, and Flurry. In April 2026, the court advanced those funds into the class-notice and claims process.

The different procedural paths then required coordinated communication with the class. The team translated a liability verdict against Meta and $59.5 million in negotiated agreements into notices, eligibility rules, recognized claims, objection procedures, approval papers, and distribution mechanics — the unglamorous machinery that connects courtroom success to the individual users entitled to participate.

The privacy trial made the continuity Villegas describes visible in another medium. A jury had to understand the promises shown to users, the code embedded in the app, the information transmitted, the recipients' knowledge, and the commercial use alleged by the plaintiffs. The record traveled from software documentation and corporate communications to live testimony and a unanimous verdict without ever losing the individual decision that began it: a person entering private health information into an app.

Catalent, LifeLock, and Flo Health arose from different markets and different bodies of law. One concerned manufacturing disclosures, another identity-protection services, and the third the movement of intimate health data.

Trial and Firm Leadership

Villegas is a partner and Executive Committee member at Labaton Keller Sucharow. She leads one of the firm's securities-litigation teams, co-leads its consumer-protection and data-privacy litigation, and serves as Chief of Compliance and chair of the firm's Women's Initiative. She also serves on the firm's corporate-governance task force. Her active docket has spanned litigation involving some of the largest companies in the country, and she serves as co-lead counsel in privacy litigation alleging unlawful recording through Amazon's voice-enabled devices.

She began her legal career as an assistant district attorney in Richmond County's Supreme Court Bureau and later handled federal litigation at King & Spalding. She graduated with honors from New York University and earned her law degree from NYU School of Law. She is admitted in New York and speaks Spanish.