Michael P. Canty

FIS and the Worldpay Integration

Canty led the Labaton team with James Christie and Michael Rogers in litigation concerning Fidelity National Information Services' acquisition and integration of Worldpay. Investors alleged that the company and senior executives overstated the combined business while concealing internal operating problems and weakening trends.

The team aligned integration milestones, internal performance indicators, executive communications, public statements, and market disclosures on a single chronology. The district court denied the motion to dismiss, allowing the case to advance toward class certification.

The same chronology supported the falsity and knowledge allegations while giving economic experts defined events to test for price impact and investor loss. That combination of operational and market evidence positioned the case for certification and merits discovery.

After the claims survived dismissal and the investor team developed the operating and market evidence needed to test the disclosure gap, the parties secured a $210 million settlement.

Estée Lauder and a $210 Million Resolution

In the Estée Lauder matter, investors alleged that the company promoted revenue growth without disclosing its dependence on daigou resellers in the duty-free channel. Canty and Christie traced product movement through travel retail and connected reseller demand to reported revenue, inventory, margins, and discounting.

The court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss in March 2026. With Labaton serving as lead counsel, the team pursued discovery and class-certification work before mediation produced a $210 million settlement announced in May 2026 and subject to judicial review.

The developed record allowed the team to distinguish ordinary travel-retail fluctuations from the alleged effects of regulatory pressure on the reseller channel and to compare those operating facts with management's public descriptions.

Counsel linked those operating facts to the challenged statements, materiality, knowledge, and investor loss. That work turned a specialized distribution channel into evidence the court could evaluate under the securities laws — the translation of commercial reality into legal proof that defines Canty's method.

Alexion, Allstate, and Okta

Labaton served as co-lead counsel in the Alexion securities litigation, which concerned pharmaceutical sales and compliance disclosures. The court certified the class in April 2023, and the parties reached a $125 million agreement later that year. Final approval and judgment converted the agreement into an administered recovery for investors.

Canty led investor-side work for public funds and other large investors, organizing evidence concerning drug commercialization, compliance practices, corporate investigations, public disclosures, and market reaction. He carried that record into evaluation and approval of the $125 million court-supervised settlement fund.

In Allstate, the investor team completed extensive fact and expert discovery, including thirty-five depositions and review of nearly 300,000 pages produced by defendants and third parties. The litigation survived a class-certification appeal and summary judgment, leaving jury questions concerning executive motives and explanations for increased automobile claims. The parties then achieved an approved $90 million settlement — a result reached with the case standing trial-ready, which is precisely when a mature record commands full value.

Okta presented a different technology record involving its acquisition of identity-management company Auth0 and a separate data-security incident. A $60 million agreement resolved claims that the company failed to disclose serious integration problems during the 2022 class period. Canty's team used contemporaneous records and witness evidence to separate ordinary integration difficulties from the facts alleged to make specific public statements misleading.

Privacy Trial and Class Recoveries

Canty and Carol Villegas led the trial team in Frasco v. Flo Health, a case that took consumer data privacy where few such cases have gone: before a jury. During the two-week trial in San Francisco federal court, the team presented testimony from five women, internal Meta communications, and technical documentation concerning the flow and use of health-app data. The jury found Meta liable for its role in the unauthorized collection and commercial use of personal health information.

The trial presentation connected data transmitted from the app to Meta's advertising systems and placed the technical flow in the context of users' experiences. That combined record allowed jurors to evaluate how the system operated and why the transmission mattered to the class.

Canty and Villegas organized the witnesses and technical records so jurors could evaluate how the data moved, who used it, and how the challenged practices affected the class — proof that intimate digital information has enforceable legal protection.

Canty also helped achieve the $650 million settlement in the Facebook biometric-privacy litigation after nearly five years of district-court proceedings and appellate review. The court-supervised fund provided recovery for users asserting statutory privacy rights, and remains among the largest consumer-privacy recoveries ever obtained.

Trial Background and Current Leadership

Canty began his trial career as a federal prosecutor in New York and a Nassau County assistant district attorney. That courtroom experience now informs his organization of witnesses, documents, expert evidence, and technical records in complex civil cases.

The transferable method is visible in witness preparation, exhibit sequence, evidentiary objections, and the coherent theory he builds for each particular civil record. It connects prosecutorial habits of chronology and proof to civil motion practice, expert preparation, and trial.

He is a partner in Labaton Keller Sucharow's New York office, a member of its Executive Committee, and the firm's General Counsel. He leads a securities litigation team and co-chairs the consumer protection and data privacy practice.

Those roles require coordination of lawyers, experts, client representatives, discovery, class-certification work, mediation, professional standards, and trial preparation across technically different cases, along with continuing coordination with the public funds and other representatives serving as plaintiffs.

Canty earned his undergraduate degree from Mary Washington College and his law degree from St. John's University School of Law.

Five women told a San Francisco jury what they had entered into a health app. The jury found that Meta had recorded it.