Peter Mougey
Individual Investors · FINRA Arbitration · Securities Fraud · Forum Reform
Requiring robust disclosures of OBAs ensures that the Member firm can properly evaluate OBAs for possible conflicts of interest with the firm’s own business, and for risk of securities fraud.
The Largest Case in the History of Jurisprudence
When federal judge Dan Aaron Polster began organizing thousands of opioid lawsuits into a single multidistrict litigation in Cleveland, he needed lawyers who could hold an unprecedented structure together: cities, counties, states, and tribal nations on one side, and on the other the manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacy chains that had moved billions of pills through American communities. The Washington Post called it the largest and most complex case in the history of jurisprudence.
Judge Polster appointed Peter Mougey to the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee. Mougey became Co-Lead of the distributor and dispensing cases and a driving force on the Negotiation Committee — one of the key negotiators behind the settlements with Johnson & Johnson and the "Big Three" distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, and later with Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Teva, and Allergan. Combined, the national settlements approached $60 billion for communities rebuilding from the epidemic.
Mougey also tried the cases that made those numbers real. He served as co-lead trial counsel for the City of San Francisco, where the litigation was tried through closing arguments and produced a liability ruling from Judge Charles R. Breyer against Walgreens — and ultimately more than $350 million for the city. He co-led the trial team for the State of New Mexico, which recovered more than $1 billion for opioid-crisis response, including $500 million from Walgreens and $274 million from Kroger, CVS, Albertsons, and Walmart. The two engagements together delivered $1.5 billion to his clients and served as a catalyst for accountability nationwide. In 2024, the American Association for Justice recognized the work with its Steven J. Sharp Public Service Award, honoring cases that tell the story of the American civil justice system.
Across his career, Mougey has represented more than 1,500 state and municipal governments, organizations, and tribal nations in litigation and arbitration around the globe, and more than 3,000 individual fraud victims in state and federal courts and arbitrations. Long before the opioid litigation, that individual work taught him how a dispute-resolution system's architecture decides who can prove a case at all.
A Private Forum with Public Consequences
An individual investor's claim against a brokerage firm is usually heard in arbitration administered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The forum is private in important respects, but its rules have public consequences. They determine how arbitrators are selected, what documents can be obtained, whether a decision explains its reasoning, and what information remains visible about a broker. Mougey has spent decades representing investors inside that system while pressing, from leadership positions in the national securities bar, to make the system fairer — service his peers recognized with the PIABA Lifetime Distinguished Service Award.
Giving Customers an All-Public Panel Option
FINRA's traditional three-person panel for larger customer disputes included two public arbitrators and one arbitrator classified as connected to the securities industry. Investor advocates sought a process allowing customers to choose an entirely public panel without spending their limited strikes to remove the industry-classified candidate.
While serving in leadership of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association — including as its president — Mougey championed the all-public option. The resulting rule changed the list-selection process so customers could choose an all-public panel, giving investors greater control over the people who decide credibility, discovery disputes, liability, and damages.
Panel composition is substantive for the client even though it does not change the elements of fraud, negligence, or breach of fiduciary duty. Arbitrators decide who is believed, what is produced, when hearings occur, and what is owed. A customer's ability to choose an all-public panel affects who applies the law to the evidence. It is a procedural reform with consequences inside every hearing held under it.
Discovery Rules Built Around Usable Evidence
Investor cases often depend on records held by the brokerage firm: account notes, supervisory reviews, emails, product materials, compensation data, complaints, and communications with the customer. FINRA's Discovery Guide uses presumptively discoverable document lists to reduce recurring disputes, and Mougey has worked to keep those lists honest to how evidence actually behaves.
His proposals have addressed searchable data, native spreadsheets, complete email threads, metadata, due-diligence records, sales guidance, complaints, and supervisory material relevant to the pleaded claim. The format can determine whether evidence is practical at a hearing: native spreadsheets preserve formulas and relationships that static printouts hide, while email threading and metadata establish sequence and custody. Mougey's advocacy has focused on matching production rules to the evidence investor claims require while respecting proportionality and privacy.
Product cases raise a related problem. A security sold to many customers may involve due-diligence records, concentration limits, firm-wide complaints, and supervisory responses far beyond one account file. The scope must remain connected to the pleaded claim, but an investor cannot test firm-wide knowledge using only personal statements. Mougey argued from the practical needs of counsel who must turn the forum's document rules into evidence at a hearing.
Fifty-One Forum Recommendations
FINRA appointed Mougey to its Dispute Resolution Task Force, which reviewed the entire arbitration and mediation forum and approved a final report in December 2015 containing fifty-one recommendations. The group balanced investor, industry, arbitrator, and public representatives; it organized ten subcommittees, solicited public input, and recorded both consensus and disagreement.
The recommendations addressed arbitrator recruitment and training, explained decisions, transparency, panel classification, mediation, and case administration. The task force emphasized investment in the arbitrator pool: arbitrators need subject-matter preparation, procedural support, and a reason to remain available, while parties need enough information to evaluate candidates and understand the forum. FINRA later tracked the recommendations as completed actions, continuing initiatives, referrals, and matters requiring further study — connecting the report to rule filings, guidance, technology, and recruitment.
Broker Records, Expungement, and Disclosure
BrokerCheck and expungement rules determine what customers can learn about a broker's registration and customer-dispute history. Mougey contributed to a PIABA Foundation study compiling data on how often expungement was requested and granted and whether customers participated, and he serves on the PIABA Foundation, which educates investors in conjunction with the SEC.
In client matters, he uses BrokerCheck disclosures, employment history, registration events, and related records to identify risk and shape claims. His policy work has addressed the balance between preserving information relevant to future investors and providing fair procedures for brokers challenging inaccurate records.
Outside Business Activities
In February 2026, Mougey submitted a comment on a FINRA proposal concerning outside business activities. He argued that disclosure should give member firms enough information to evaluate conflicts and securities-fraud risk while avoiding unnecessary burdens on benign outside work.
The comment addressed a recurring supervisory problem: financial professionals may engage in activities outside their registered firm, while customers perceive those activities as connected to the professional relationship. Mougey's position centered on a practical point — a firm cannot assess or supervise an outside activity unless it receives sufficient information about the activity and its relationship to customers.
Practice and Background
Mougey is a shareholder at Levin Papantonio and chairs its Securities and Business Litigation department, combining individual investor representation with complex litigation for governments, pension funds, other organizations, and sovereign nations. He lectures nationally on bet-the-company litigation, broker-dealer regulation, structured finance, and managing large datasets in litigation. He joined the firm in 2008 after building a practice in securities and financial-services disputes.
He earned a finance degree from Creighton University, an MBA from the University of Portland, and a law degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. He completed the Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional program at the FINRA Institute at Wharton and is admitted in Florida and Alabama.