Salvatore J. Graziano

Learning What the Fact Finder Needs

Graziano's trial work began during his third year at New York University School of Law, when an intensive criminal-law clinic put him in court and led to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, where he later served as an Assistant District Attorney. Prosecution taught him what judges needed to know, what jurors expected to see, and how to master facts closely enough to select the evidence that decides a dispute.

Investor litigation preserved everything he valued in that work — investigating alleged wrongdoing, testing a company's account against documents and witnesses, presenting a civil case — and added a demand prosecution never made: learning an unfamiliar business, from clinical trial design to semiconductor demand, before the first pleading is drafted. His cases have required fluency in clinical studies, pharmaceutical regulation, bank sales practices, accounting judgments, brand investment, and data privacy.

Graziano is a partner and Executive Committee member at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. He leads teams working with pension-fund clients, co-lead counsel, appellate lawyers, scientific and economic experts, and claims administrators, keeping the complaint, discovery record, trial proof, and appellate position aligned through years of collective work.

Merck Vioxx: $830 Million

Investors alleged that Merck and several officers and scientists misled the market about the cardiovascular risks and commercial prospects of Vioxx, the pain medicine Merck withdrew worldwide on September 30, 2004.

The case first had to survive time itself. In 2010, the Supreme Court unanimously allowed the investors' claims to proceed, holding that the two-year limitations period begins when a reasonably diligent plaintiff discovers the facts constituting the violation — including facts showing the defendant's state of mind — and that suspicion sufficient to prompt investigation does not itself start the clock.

Graziano led BLB&G's work across the decade-long litigation while the investors' broader appellate team handled the Supreme Court briefing and argument. After remand, his team built the record: the district court sustained the central allegations and certified a class, and fact and expert discovery encompassed fifty-nine depositions — fourteen of them expert — and more than thirty-five million pages produced by defendants and third parties. Experts in biostatistics, cardiology, drug regulation, gastroenterology, and damages each supplied a different link among the clinical studies, the challenged statements, and the market losses.

In May 2015, the court largely denied Merck's summary-judgment motions, finding evidence from which a jury could conclude that defendants knowingly or recklessly misled investors when discussing cardiovascular-safety studies and data. Trial was set for March 1, 2016. Merck then paid $830 million into a class fund; the court granted final approval on June 28, 2016, and the claims process concluded with distribution of the net fund to investors.

ENHANCE, Vytorin, and Zetia: $688 Million

Schering-Plough and Merck marketed Vytorin, a combination of Zetia and generic simvastatin. The ENHANCE clinical trial compared Vytorin with simvastatin alone and found no statistically significant difference in the study's measure of atherosclerosis. Investors challenged statements concerning the drugs and the timing of the study's results.

The district courts denied dismissal, certified classes, and denied summary judgment, and the Third Circuit declined interlocutory review of the certification orders. Graziano led BLB&G's team in the Schering case alongside co-lead counsel and pension-fund clients, connecting the study's design and timing, the public descriptions of the drugs, and the market response to the results. The coordinated actions required separate causation, damages, class, and approval records, which remained distinct through judgment, allocation, and administration.

Trial was scheduled for March 4, 2013. The Schering action settled for $473 million and the related Merck Vytorin/Zetia action for $215 million; the court approved both on October 1, 2013, for a combined $688 million.

Wells Fargo Cross-Selling: $480 Million

Investors alleged that Wells Fargo praised its cross-selling model and sales culture while employees opened millions of unauthorized accounts to meet performance targets.

Union Asset Management Holding AG served as lead plaintiff, BLB&G as lead counsel, and Graziano held named leadership responsibility for the investor-side case. Documents, employee accounts, regulatory findings, executive testimony, and market evidence had to be assembled into one chronology showing how conduct inside the bank's branches affected what investors were told about customer demand.

The court refused to dismiss most claims in February 2018. The parties later executed a $480 million cash settlement, approved on December 18, 2018, with judgment entered two days later. Distributions began in 2020 and continued in later rounds, Graziano's team carrying the disclosure theory from pleading through approval, judgment, and repeated payments to eligible investors.

Kraft Heinz: $450 Million

After the 2015 merger of Kraft and Heinz, margins rose alongside deep cost reductions and restructuring. Investors alleged that cuts to research, quality control, and the supply chain were weakening brands and customer relationships while public statements overstated the sustainability of the savings. In February 2019, Kraft Heinz announced a $15.4 billion goodwill impairment and disclosed an SEC subpoena concerning procurement accounting.

Graziano and Katherine Sinderson were BLB&G's named case leaders, with Erika Connolly on the team and Kessler Topaz as co-lead counsel. The plaintiffs overcame renewed dismissal motions, served subpoenas on twenty-three third parties, and reviewed more than 14.7 million pages, building a record that reached from internal projections and procurement practices to the carrying value of household brands. Mediation before former federal judge Layn Phillips produced a recommendation accepted in February 2023, and the court approved a $450 million cash settlement, entering judgment on September 12, 2023.

Facebook and NVIDIA at the Supreme Court

In 2024, two of Graziano's cases reached the Supreme Court in the same term. The Facebook case concerned risk disclosures that described data misuse as a merely possible event after Cambridge Analytica had already obtained information from millions of users. The NVIDIA case concerned pleading requirements for internal records, falsity, and scienter in allegations that cryptocurrency demand drove gaming revenue. Graziano appeared on respondents' briefs with lawyers from BLB&G, other investor firms, and Supreme Court specialists.

The Court heard argument in both and dismissed both writs as improvidently granted — Facebook on November 22 and NVIDIA on December 11, 2024. The orders created no new rule, left the Ninth Circuit judgments in place, and returned the claims to the lower courts, where the theory chosen in each complaint, the evidence developed in discovery, and the issues preserved for review continued supporting the same investor claims.

Practice and Education

Graziano represents investors and other plaintiffs in securities-fraud and complex-litigation matters, including Merck Vioxx, Schering-Plough ENHANCE, Wells Fargo, Kraft Heinz, General Motors, Facebook, and NVIDIA.

He graduated cum laude from New York University with a degree in psychology and earned his law degree, also cum laude, from New York University School of Law. He has been admitted to the New York bar since 1992.