Jeremy A. Lieberman

The record behind the number was sixty-eight depositions and more than twenty-five million pages of documents, taken and read across a case that Lieberman has described in one line: "a UK company suing a Brazilian company in U.S. courts." The lead plaintiff was Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited, the pension scheme of British university staff, which Judge Rakoff appointed class representative on February 2, 2016; the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer and the Employees' Retirement System of the State of Hawaii represented the purchasers of Petrobras debt. "We have led this securities class action diligently and intensively," Jeremy Hill, the scheme's group general counsel, said when the agreement was announced. Of the auditor's payment Lieberman said that it ensured accountability for "gatekeepers whose duty it is to protect the interests of shareholders."

Where Title Passed

The suit, filed on December 8, 2014, grew out of the Brazilian investigation known as Operation Car Wash: contractors and suppliers had rigged the bidding on Petrobras projects at inflated prices and paid bribes and kickbacks to the executives who awarded them, while the company carried the inflated costs as assets. Its market capitalization fell from about $310 billion in 2009 to $39 billion in early 2015, and its American depositary shares lost 78 percent of their value. Under Morrison v. National Australia Bank, decided in 2010, the federal securities laws reach only securities listed on a domestic exchange and other securities bought or sold in domestic transactions. Petrobras's depositary shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its notes were listed there but did not trade there, and for each note purchase the question was where the buyer became irrevocably bound or where title passed.

Judge Rakoff certified two classes on February 2, 2016: purchasers of Petrobras depositary shares and debt on the New York Stock Exchange or in domestic transactions between January 22, 2010 and July 28, 2015, and purchasers of the debt sold in the May 15, 2013 and March 11, 2014 offerings in domestic transactions. The facts that made a transaction domestic, he wrote, were highly likely to be documented. Petrobras took the certification to the Second Circuit, which decided the appeal on July 7, 2017 in an opinion by Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, sitting by designation with Judges Peter W. Hall and Debra Ann Livingston, after Lieberman argued for the investors. The court held that a class is ascertainable when objective criteria give it definite boundaries, and that no separate showing of administrative feasibility is required; it held that domesticity could be shown by the formation of contracts, the placement of purchase orders or the exchange of money; and it returned to Judge Rakoff the question whether that showing could be made by generalized proof. Petrobras petitioned for certiorari in November 2017 on the evidence needed for the presumption of reliance at certification, with Lieberman as counsel of record for the investors, and the agreement of December 31 came before the Court could consider it. The settlement class took in transactions on the New York Stock Exchange, transactions cleared or settled through the Depository Trust Company and other domestic transactions, and the defendants waived the domesticity objection for settlement purposes. More than one million notices went out worldwide. After the Second Circuit's affirmance, the parties dismissed the petition by agreement in October 2019.

Tel Aviv

Perrigo Company plc was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. In the District of New Jersey, six Israeli institutions, Migdal Insurance Company, Migdal Makefet Pension and Provident Funds, Clal Insurance Company, Clal Pension and Provident, the Atudot Pension Fund and Meitav DS Provident Funds and Pension, sued Perrigo, its chief executive Joseph C. Papa and its chief financial officer Judy Brown over statements made from April 2015 to May 2017, including the period in which Perrigo fought off Mylan's tender offer, about the integration of Omega Pharma, the pricing of its generic drugs, its organic growth and its Tysabri royalty stream. Pomerantz was class counsel with Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. On November 14, 2019, Judge Madeline Cox Arleo certified three classes: purchasers on the New York Stock Exchange between April 21, 2015 and May 2, 2017, purchasers on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in the same period, and holders of the stock from November 12, 2015 through the expiration of Mylan's offer on November 13. For the Tel Aviv class she worked through the Cammer factors for that exchange, more than six hundred analyst reports, at least seventeen market makers and an event study tying price to information, and found that four of the five favored an efficient market, so that the Israeli purchasers could rely on the fraud-on-the-market presumption too.

Perrigo agreed to pay $97 million. The court granted preliminary approval on April 23, 2024 and heard the settlement on September 5, 2024; judgment and the allocation plan followed that month, and a distribution plan in July 2025. One investor tried to leave the class after the fact. Sculptor Master Fund and Sculptor Enhanced Master Fund, which had held about five percent of Perrigo's shares and had received the class notice, filed no request for exclusion by the December 3, 2020 deadline, litigated a separate action, and moved to opt out about three and a half years late, after the settlement had been preliminarily approved. Chief Judge Bumb denied the motion on September 12, 2024: when a court gives clear instructions on how to opt out of a complex class action, she wrote, courts should not have to engage in guesswork. On August 12, 2025, the Third Circuit affirmed in a precedential opinion by Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, joined by Judges Paul B. Matey and Peter J. Phipps, holding that class members must follow the opt-out procedure the district court prescribes and that a reasonable indication of an intent to opt out is not enough.

In Every Important Respect

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, listed in New York and Tel Aviv, faced a securities class action in the District of Connecticut over its generic-drug pricing, seventy-six price increases between July 2013 and April 2016, and its marketing of the opioids Actiq and Fentora. Twenty-two Israeli institutional investors opted out and retained Pomerantz to sue on their own, for American depositary shares bought on the New York Stock Exchange and for ordinary shares bought on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange under Israeli securities law. Teva moved to dismiss the Israeli-law claims. In January 2021 Judge Stefan R. Underhill denied the motion and kept the claims under the court's supplemental jurisdiction; the federal and Israeli claims, he wrote, "seem to me, in every important respect, identical." Lieberman and Michael J. Wernke led the actions, which were resolved by a confidential settlement in January 2024.

Twenty-Three Recalls

In the Southern District of New York, Lieberman and Laurence Rosen were lead counsel for Gary Koopmann, Timothy Kidd and Victor Pirnik and a class of investors who bought Fiat Chrysler Automobiles common stock on a United States exchange or in a United States transaction between October 13, 2014 and May 23, 2017. The complaint concerned the company's statements about vehicle safety and its handling of recalls; in July 2015 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had imposed a $105 million penalty on the company for its handling of twenty-three recalls covering more than eleven million vehicles. When the Department of Transportation refused to let a former NHTSA employee be deposed, Pomerantz challenged the refusal, and the court held that the department's Touhy regulations were unlawful to the extent that they applied to former employees. Fiat Chrysler agreed to pay $110 million, and Judge Jesse M. Furman approved the settlement in 2019.

Fordham

Lieberman graduated from Fordham University School of Law in 2002, where he was a staff member of the Fordham Urban Law Journal, and began as a litigation associate at a New York firm in complex commercial litigation. He joined Pomerantz in August 2004, became a partner in January 2010 and managing partner in 2016; the firm now has six offices, including London and Paris, and he oversees its cases from New York.

The cross-border practice began with BP. After the Gulf of Mexico spill of April 2010, Morrison left investors who had bought BP's ordinary shares in London outside the federal securities laws, and Pomerantz brought their claims under English law before Judge Keith P. Ellison in the Southern District of Texas for nearly three dozen institutions, later more than 125, from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Australia. Judge Ellison let the American institutions proceed in 2013, the foreign institutions in 2014 and holders who had kept their shares in 2017, and the actions were resolved by a confidential settlement in early 2021, after nine years; Matthew L. Tuccillo led the litigation, with Lieberman, Marc I. Gross and Jennifer Pafiti. "We did not look at this case as a big moneymaker," Lieberman has said of it. Morrison, in his account, was "a little like when a lane opens up on the highway" for a firm that had been competing for the same American pension funds as everyone else, and the firm took it abroad: "Once we had a taste of success in Israel," he has said, the question became how to repeat it, and England came next.

Pure Folly

Since 2010 the federal securities laws have reached a purchase of a company's shares on a United States exchange and stopped at a purchase of the same company's shares on an exchange abroad. In Petrobras that line ran through the mechanics of each note trade, where the contract formed, where the order was placed, where the money changed hands. In Perrigo it met a second class under Israeli law and an efficient-market finding for the Tel Aviv exchange. In Teva it met twenty-two direct actions and a judge who found the two bodies of law identical in every important respect. In BP it met English law in a Texas courtroom. Lieberman puts the rule in a sentence: if you buy on a United States exchange you are covered, and if you buy the same securities of the same company on a non-U.S. exchange you are not, and "that's just pure folly."