Jonathan Gardner

The claims arose from Uber's May 2019 initial public offering. Investors alleged that the offering documents omitted or misstated material facts about the company's business and safety record — its launch-first-and-deal-with-regulators-later operating model, passenger-safety deficiencies, mounting losses and expenses, and slowing growth. The court denied two dismissal motions, certified the class, and left certification standing after an interlocutory challenge.

Then came the excavation. Defendants produced nearly 108,000 documents across more than seventy productions; third parties produced over 31,000; the underwriters, more than 86,000. The parties took or defended forty-six depositions and exchanged eleven expert reports. Gardner linked every subject-matter assignment — driver classification, passenger safety, operating losses, expenses, growth disclosures — to a single class and merits theory, feeding one discovery and expert record on one shared schedule, while the pension system received continuous advice on the proof, the mediation, and the settlement. After a full-day mediation, the mediator recommended $200 million. The parties accepted in April 2024, and the district court granted final approval.

From Monitoring to Courtroom Record

Gardner's firmwide role is the assembly line behind cases like Uber, and it starts long before a complaint exists. Monitoring identifies transactions and disclosures; investigators develop witnesses, industry material, and market evidence; case evaluation tests the governing claims; and litigators carry the theory through pleading, discovery, certification, and expert review.

The discipline is that each stage anticipates the next. Public statements are tested against interviews, industry material, regulatory events, and market data before anything is filed. Pleadings must anticipate discovery; discovery must preserve the issues experts will analyze; and expert work must answer the legal questions the class must prove. The pension systems and asset managers who serve as lead plaintiffs — supervising counsel, responding to discovery, reviewing major filings, deciding whether to settle — are kept connected to the evidence and the remedy at every step.

A Mine, a Platform, a Pill

The Barrick Gold litigation began at 15,000 feet in the Andes, at the Pascua-Lama mine straddling the Chile-Argentina border. Investors alleged that the company concealed the project's true cost and timeline, environmental violations, and internal-control deficiencies infecting its cost and impairment reporting. Gardner oversaw the investigation and prosecution, translating field conditions at a high-altitude construction project into securities proof — connecting what happened at the mine to the schedules, budgets, executive knowledge, and impairment accounting reflected in market disclosures. The litigation proceeded through class certification to a $140 million court-approved settlement in 2016.

In Hewlett-Packard, investors challenged the company's statements about its plans for the webOS platform after acquiring Palm; the amended complaint drew on accounts from thirteen confidential witnesses, and Gardner served as lead attorney through discovery and a $57 million approved settlement. In Endo, a public pension fund alleged that offering documents for a 2015 secondary stock sale concealed declining demand and unsustainable practices in the generic-drug division; a Pennsylvania state court overruled preliminary objections, and Gardner led the matter to a $50 million resolution finally approved in 2019.

He has also played an integral role in some of the largest recoveries of the era, including the historic $1 billion settlement secured against Dell on behalf of shareholders.

When the Firms Themselves Collapsed

Some of Gardner's most demanding work came out of financial failure, where the defendant at the center of the case no longer existed and recovery had to come from everyone around it.

He led the representation of investors in MF Global's initial-public-offering litigation, which produced a $90 million recovery. In the Lehman Brothers equity and debt litigation, he represented the City of Edinburgh Council as administrator of the Lothian Pension Fund and helped coordinate settlements exceeding $600 million — pieced together from former officers and directors, Lehman's accounting firm, and the underwriting banks, with the claims and recoveries kept distinct across related proceedings. For the Massachusetts Bricklayers and Masons Trust Funds, he prosecuted a direct residential-mortgage-backed-securities action against Deutsche Bank, building proof from loan pools, underwriting representations, offering documents, and statistical evidence, and recovering $32.5 million.

Backdating and the Fund Cases

Gardner's options-backdating docket — Monster Worldwide, SafeNet, Semtech, MRV Communications, Mercury Interactive — turned a single species of misconduct into a series of issuer-specific records. Each issuer required its own proof of option grants, accounting treatment, public statements, responsible officers, and market consequences. His teams carried forward tested questions, document requests, expert methods, and accumulated legal knowledge from case to case, while each proceeding retained its own grants, defendants, evidence, class, and court-supervised resolution.

His Lipper work approached from a different angle: a convertible-bond hedge fund whose successor liquidating trustee pursued claims against a former auditor, a general partner, and limited partners who had received excess distributions. The recoveries — $29.9 million from the auditor and more than $5.2 million from limited partners — required professional-liability analysis, tracing, and fund accounting.

Managing Partner and Head of Litigation

Gardner serves as Labaton's Managing Partner, Head of Litigation, and a member of its Executive Committee, overseeing securities matters for public pension funds and other large investors and coordinating the firm's monitoring, investigation, case-evaluation, litigation, and alternative-dispute-resolution work.

The training he prescribes for young lawyers begins the day associates arrive, when the firm pairs them with mentors, and covers complaint drafting, research, and the business of law. It has a practical litigation function: associates are trained to understand how each individual assignment affects the pleading, the discovery, the expert work, and the client's obligations — the same connected thinking that carried Uber from 225,000 documents to a $200 million fund.

Gardner also helped develop Labaton's groundbreaking Alternative Dispute Resolution practice, built in response to the mandatory arbitration clauses and class-action waivers spreading through consumer contracts — adapting staffing, procedure, discovery, and negotiation to whichever forum a company's fine print requires, while keeping the client's substantive objective fixed.

He earned his undergraduate degree from American University and his law degree from St. John's University School of Law.