Jonathan D. Uslaner
Securities Fraud · Class Actions · Direct Claims · Investor-Side Litigation
Corporate actors seem to develop new ways to commit fraud.
The Asset Cap
On February 2, 2018, the Federal Reserve barred Wells Fargo from growing its balance sheet until it repaired the governance and risk-management failures behind the account-opening scandal of 2016, and on April 20 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency added consent orders of their own and $1 billion in penalties. Jonathan D. Uslaner co-led the Bernstein Litowitz team in the securities class action that followed, In re Wells Fargo & Company Securities Litigation in the Southern District of New York, for the Louisiana Sheriffs' Pension & Relief Fund, the Public Employees' Retirement System of Mississippi, the Rhode Island Office of the General Treasurer and Handelsbanken Fonder AB, appointed lead plaintiffs on August 29, 2020, with Cohen Milstein as co-lead counsel.
The amended complaint of November 9, 2020 took the 2016 scandal as background and rested on what the bank told investors between February 2, 2018 and March 12, 2020 about its progress under the orders and its dealings with its regulators, and on six disclosures between January 15, 2019 and March 12, 2020 that, the plaintiffs alleged, revealed how far behind that work was. The court largely denied the motion to dismiss on September 30, 2021. The bank and others produced more than 3.5 million pages, twenty-seven third parties were subpoenaed, and after a mediation before Layn R. Phillips on January 6, 2023 the parties signed a $1 billion settlement on May 8, 2023. Judge Jennifer L. Rochon approved it on September 8, 2023, and the first distribution to investors went out on October 22, 2024.
Trial Set for May 9, 2016
Genworth Financial told investors between October 30, 2013 and November 5, 2014 that it had conducted an "intensive, very broad and deep review" of its long-term-care insurance business. The complaint Uslaner led in the Eastern District of Virginia, for the Fresno County Employees' Retirement Association and the Province of Alberta through the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, alleged that the company had not comprehensively reviewed its reserves since 2012, that the review it had done rested on data from before 2010, and that the reserves were materially deficient. The court denied the motion to dismiss on May 1, 2015 and set trial for May 9, 2016. The $219 million settlement was announced on March 11, 2016 and approved on July 20.
In the London Whale case against JPMorgan Chase, in which he was one of five case leaders, the class period ran from April 13, 2012, the day Jamie Dimon called the reports about the Chief Investment Office's trading "a complete tempest in a teapot," to May 21, 2012, as the office's losses passed $5 billion; the claims were that the bank had described proprietary bets as hedging and understated the office's risk through its value-at-risk figures. Judge George B. Daniels approved a $150 million settlement for the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, the Oregon State Treasurer and the Oregon Public Employee Retirement Fund on May 10, 2016.
Lontra and Loengo
Cobalt International Energy sold stock and convertible notes between February 2012 and May 2014 while describing its offshore Angolan blocks as world-class oil prospects. The complaint alleged that it had obtained them through partners partly owned by Angolan officials, exposing it to liability under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and that it overstated what its wells had found; the Lontra well's results came out on December 1, 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission's Wells notice on August 5, 2014, and the Loengo well's results on November 4, 2014. Uslaner was one of the case leaders, with Gerald H. Silk and Avi Josefson, for lead plaintiffs including the GAMCO trusts, Sjunde AP-Fonden and the San Antonio fire and police retiree health fund. The Southern District of Texas denied most of the motions to dismiss on January 19, 2016 and certified the class on June 15, 2017, and Cobalt filed for Chapter 11 on December 14, 2017. The settlements approved on February 13, 2019 were $146.85 million from the private-equity sponsors, their board designees and a Goldman Sachs affiliate, $22.75 million from the other underwriters, and a $220 million allowed claim against Cobalt payable from its insurance.
Bernstein Litowitz and Motley Rice were co-lead counsel for Sjunde AP-Fonden and Metzler Asset Management in the Qualcomm case, over the company's statements from February 1, 2012 to January 20, 2017 about how it bundled the negotiation of its patent licenses with its chip-supply agreements. The court denied the motion to dismiss on March 18, 2019 and certified the class on March 20, 2023, and the Ninth Circuit declined to review certification on June 1, 2023. The parties produced some 60 million pages, took more than thirty-seven depositions and exchanged eleven expert reports before agreeing on May 31, 2024 to settle for $75 million; Uslaner and Gregg S. Levin of Motley Rice presented the settlement for approval, which the court granted on September 27, 2024.
Eighteen Institutions
Eighteen institutional investors brought their own actions against Valeant Pharmaceuticals with Uslaner as counsel and resolved them on confidential terms, and the clients he represented in the American Realty Capital Properties opt-out actions recovered $85 million. He advises funds on whether to remain in a class or sue separately, weighing their transaction histories, deadlines, forum, likely recovery, discovery burden, releases and duration, and on the collective and opt-in procedures of other countries: the territorial limits of the United States securities laws, foreign deadlines, the recognition of judgments and the effect of each route on a fund's holdings and duties. The choice decides who directs discovery, who evaluates a settlement and how the fund's objectives are carried into trial preparation. Earlier in his career he co-led the Bank of America–Merrill Lynch merger case, settled for $2.425 billion on September 28, 2012, weeks before trial, and led the Wells Fargo mortgage-backed certificates case to a $125 million recovery.
Inglewood
Uslaner graduated magna cum laude from Duke University in 2001, where he chaired the undergraduate publications board, and took his law degree in 2005 from the University of Texas, where he held a Presidential Academic Merit Fellowship and was an articles editor of the Texas Journal of Business Law. He was a judicial extern for Justice Steven Wayne Smith of the Supreme Court of Texas, a senior litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and a volunteer prosecutor for the City of Inglewood, California, trying cases, before joining Bernstein Litowitz, where he heads the Los Angeles office. He is admitted in California and New York, in the Central, Northern and Southern Districts of California and the Southern District of New York, and before the Fifth and Ninth Circuits. He sits on the Board of Governors of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers and on the boards of UCPLA and Home of Guiding Hands, which serve people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. He writes on class actions and securities law for Pensions & Investments and SACRS Magazine and in a recurring Reuters column, where on April 28, 2026 he and Matthew Goldstein took up the proposed federal rules for evidence generated by artificial intelligence.
