Darren J. Robbins

A Music Shop in San Bernardino

Robbins grew up in San Bernardino, where his father operated a music shop.

He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Southern California and graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1993. He is a founding partner of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, and his practice includes securities fraud, shareholder derivative litigation, corporate takeovers, and the representation of pension funds and other large investors. He also led the firm's prosecution of wrongdoing connected to the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities before the global financial crisis.

Robbins's economics training bears directly on the quantitative questions that arise in loss causation and damages: how much of a price was attributable to the challenged information, on which days, and what a purchaser lost as a result. That analysis informs how his teams examine corporate statements, market information, transaction data, and investor losses.

Choosing the Case Before Filing It

Before filing, his teams assess whether the operational facts and market evidence can sustain the asserted theory through discovery, expert analysis, trial, and any later claims process.

His case-selection analysis includes the eventual distribution because a claim that can be pleaded and proven may still fail to produce a workable recovery if the damages model cannot be applied to individual purchasers.

Robbins has described preparation and repetition as firmwide habits. Investigators, forensic accountants, economists, damages analysts, paralegals, technology specialists, and trial lawyers receive defined assignments early enough to develop the record together rather than in sequence. Experienced lawyers rehearse examinations and work through documents and witness testimony before the courtroom schedule becomes urgent.

The early rehearsals prepare the team for matters that proceed to trial and refine the presentation used in settlement negotiations.

Re-Aging

Household International operated mortgage, home-equity, automobile-finance, and credit-card businesses. Investors alleged that its lending practices produced growing delinquencies while public reporting concealed the resulting risk.

One disputed practice "re-aged" delinquent loans so that they no longer appeared in a closely watched delinquency measure. Another concerned revenue recognition for four credit-card agreements.

The re-aging allegation required operational proof as well as accounting analysis. A delinquency ratio depends on the definition of delinquency behind it. Reclassifying a loan that a borrower has not caught up on leaves the loan and its risk unchanged while improving the published number. Establishing that requires evidence of who authorized the servicing practice, how it was applied, and what it removed from the reported figure.

California enforcement and a multistate investigation produced a $484 million consumer settlement. During the disclosure period identified by the securities plaintiffs, Household's stock fell from $60.90 to $28.20.

Four Million Pages

The first securities complaint was filed on August 19, 2002. Seven related cases were consolidated that December. The court appointed the Glickenhaus Investor Group as lead plaintiff and Robbins Geller's predecessor firm as lead counsel. A consolidated complaint followed in March 2003, and the court certified the class in 2004.

A separate $1.5 million settlement with Arthur Andersen narrowed the litigation to Household, three senior executives, forty public statements, and the investor losses attributed to the alleged fraud.

Household and its outside auditors produced more than four million pages in discovery. Plaintiffs' counsel organized that record across lending, servicing, accounting, regulatory, executive, and market evidence — six parallel bodies of proof that had to converge on the same forty statements.

Twenty-Six Trial Days

Trial began in Chicago on March 30, 2009 and ran six weeks and twenty-six trial days. The jury heard twenty-two witnesses and reviewed more than two hundred plaintiffs' exhibits.

Robbins helped coordinate a twenty-one-person trial operation in Chicago, integrating witness preparation, exhibits, economic proof, examinations, technology, and daily courtroom logistics across the six-week proceeding.

The case reached a jury — an uncommon procedural endpoint in securities class litigation, where the overwhelming majority of matters settle or dissolve long before openings. Sustaining a twenty-one-person operation for twenty-six trial days, seven years after filing, required the trial team to integrate the record, witnesses, exhibits, economic proof, and courtroom logistics well before the first day of testimony.

Seventeen Statements

The verdict form required the jury to make findings statement by statement: whether each was false or misleading, whether it was material, whether it caused loss, which defendant was responsible, which business practice was involved, and whether that defendant acted knowingly or recklessly.

On May 7, the jury found seventeen statements false or misleading, material, loss-causing, and attributable to specified defendants acting knowingly or recklessly.

For purchases from March 23, 2001 through October 11, 2002, the jury adopted a daily table estimating the inflation in Household's share price, and allocated responsibility among Household and the three individual defendants.

Rather than a single lump figure, the jury's daily inflation table specified, for each trading day in the class period, the amount by which the price exceeded what it would have been absent the misstatements. The table supplied the calculation later used for each claimant's recovery.

10,902 Investor Claims

The district court established a second-phase protocol in November 2010. Notice packages began reaching hundreds of thousands of potential class members and nominees in January 2011.

Investors documented their transactions and answered a further question: whether they would still have purchased Household stock at the inflated price had they known the effect of the statements the jury found false or misleading.

That question addressed individual reliance for each claimant rather than presuming it for the class. The second phase therefore required its own protocol and adjudication to apply the jury's general findings to each claimant.

A claims administrator and special master evaluated submissions, addressed defense objections, and managed discovery involving selected public funds and other large investors. The process included 10,902 claimants who stated that they would not have paid the inflated price.

The claims work kept the jury's statement-specific findings connected to transaction records, reliance responses, class notice, and damages calculations for thousands of investors.

June 6

By 2016, the case was assigned to Judge Jorge L. Alonso, and another jury trial was scheduled for June 6.

Plaintiffs supplemented their loss-causation analysis, sustained their expert proof, addressed executive attribution, and prepared the remaining questions for trial. A fourteen-person team assembled in Chicago while retired Judge Layn Phillips continued mediation.

On June 5, Judge Phillips proposed a $1.575 billion resolution. Both sides accepted on June 6 — the scheduled opening day — and signed the stipulation on June 17.

The proposal came the night before trial, when the fourteen-person team was already in Chicago and the case was set to begin the next day, fourteen years after the complaint was filed. It stands among the largest recoveries ever obtained in a securities class action that went through trial.

Judge Alonso granted final approval in October and entered final judgment and dismissal on November 10.

The allocation plan reused the claims already submitted. Eligibility depended on a valid proof of claim, the required reliance response, applicable discovery, and the plan's calculation rules. Recognized losses were computed using the jury's inflation table, first-in-first-out transaction matching, and the statutory ninety-day cap that limits recoverable damages by reference to the security's average trading price in the period following corrective disclosure.

Seven years after the verdict, the jury's daily table was still doing the arithmetic.

Robbins helped maintain the team and the evidentiary record from investigation and certification through the first trial, claims administration, renewed expert work, mediation, approval, and distribution. The matter concluded fourteen years after filing.

Twelve Million Pages and Nine Claims

Robbins later led the firm's work in the American Realty Capital Properties litigation, in which investors alleged that the company had manipulated Adjusted Funds From Operations and issued misleading reports involving several securities.

The plaintiffs' team reviewed more than twelve million pages, took or defended more than seventy depositions, obtained certification of nine claims involving seven securities, and opposed twelve summary-judgment motions.

Certifying nine claims across seven securities required claim- and instrument-specific work. Each instrument had its own offering documents, purchaser population, and price history, requiring separate analysis of predominance and a damages methodology capable of addressing the relevant security.

A twenty-person team prepared for a six-to-eight-week trial, with Michael J. Dowd and Jason A. Forge assigned to the courtroom presentation. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein approved a $1.025 billion settlement in January 2020.

The resolution drew from multiple sources: $738.5 million from ARCP/VEREIT, $49 million from Grant Thornton, and $237.5 million associated with former executives and affiliated entities. Recovering separately from the company, its auditor, and individuals required maintaining three distinct theories of responsibility through discovery and dispositive motions.

The recovery represents the largest percentage of claimed damages obtained in any major class action under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act resolved before trial. The $237.5 million contributed in connection with individual defendants is also the largest personal component ever paid into a securities class settlement.

Robbins's work extended across case selection, discovery, certification, expert proof, dispositive motions, trial preparation, settlement administration, and judicial review. His economics training and case-management method remain visible in the loss analysis, trial preparation, and distribution work.