Serena P. Hallowell

Choosing the Investor’s Route

Hallowell leads Motley Rice’s direct-action litigation efforts and is a leader of its securities-fraud team. She has more than twenty years of complex-litigation and securities experience.

Her clients include public pension funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, family offices, and other large investors. She evaluates each client’s transaction history, available claims, proof, governing time limits, objectives, and potential recovery before recommending class participation, class leadership, or a separate action.

That review begins with the securities held, the place and timing of each purchase, the challenged disclosures or conduct, and the route by which the alleged loss occurred. Client mandate, portfolio structure, internal authority, and the evidence available for each statutory element shape the procedural choice.

Hallowell’s work in both aggregate and direct litigation allows her to compare an existing class record with the individualized pleadings, transactions, evidence, and settlement authority required for an opt-out case.

In a direct action, the investor must establish its own transactions, reliance where required, loss causation, and damages. It also controls client-specific pleadings, discovery responses, experts, and settlement authorization rather than relying solely on the class record.

Barrick Gold and Endo Recoveries

Hallowell led or was a key member of litigation teams whose settlements included the $48 million CVS Caremark recovery, the $41.5 million settlement in In re NII Holdings in the Eastern District of Virginia’s “rocket docket,” and the $42.5 million Intuitive Surgical settlement. Her work on those teams included pleading, discovery, expert development, negotiation, judicial review, and approval.

In re Barrick Gold Securities Litigation resolved investor claims for $140 million after litigation concerning statements about the Pascua-Lama mining project. Hallowell and the investor team developed the project, regulatory, disclosure, and market-impact record supporting the class recovery.

That record traced the project’s development, regulatory risks, challenged disclosures, and the market response. Years of discovery, expert work, and motion practice connected the project history with the investors’ class claims before the recovery was presented for approval.

Endo resolved a state-court Securities Act matter for $50 million. The action concerned a secondary public offering and required counsel to address the statute’s distinct elements, defendants, defenses, and state-court procedures.

The state-court setting and offering claims required a record separate from an Exchange Act fraud case. Pleading, discovery, class administration, and settlement work followed the Securities Act’s own elements and the procedural rules governing that forum.

Valeant Opt-Out Victory and Settlements

Hallowell has led opt-out matters concerning Valeant, Perrigo, and Teva for public funds and other large investors. Her teams preserve each investor’s transactions, causation and damages evidence, legal theories, discovery strategy, and settlement authority on a separate record.

Timing is part of that preservation. The Supreme Court’s American Pipe doctrine, the limitations analysis in ANZ Securities, and later Valeant-related tolling decisions inform when an investor must act to keep individual claims and the selected forum available.

In the Valeant litigation, Hallowell’s team asserted claims under New Jersey’s racketeering statute and became the first opt-out plaintiff to defeat dismissal of that theory. The ruling preserved the clients’ transaction-specific claims and opened a path to discovery.

The racketeering theory required the team to plead a pattern, enterprise, predicate conduct, injury, and causation rather than relabel a federal securities claim. Preserving it supplied an additional client-specific pathway into discovery for the opt-out investors.

Hallowell resolved her final two Valeant opt-out matters for large investors in 2025. Those completed individual settlements followed the favorable dismissal ruling and maintained client-specific pleadings and recovery decisions throughout the direct actions.

Cross-Border Investor Advice

Hallowell’s publications address foreign securities after Morrison, recovery strategies after ANZ Securities, mutual-fund participation, and direct actions involving foreign purchases.

For cross-border holdings, she examines the place of the transaction, listing, issuer, investor, and alleged conduct to determine which losses fit an existing class, which support a direct action, and which forum offers an available remedy.

That mapping separates domestic and foreign transactions, identifies the governing limitation periods, and determines whether an existing class reaches the investor’s purchases. It also helps align the proposed forum and claims with the client’s actual trading record.

She also presents litigation options to trustees, investment staff, and outside fiduciaries for public entities with internal approval processes. Her participation in public-pension and securities-law organizations keeps those governance requirements central during case selection and resolution.

Trustees and investment staff may need a documented comparison before authorizing class leadership, an opt-out, or a direct filing. Hallowell translates the transaction and legal analysis into those internal approvals and maintains the separate record supporting the selected route.

Current Leadership and Education

Hallowell is a member of Motley Rice and leads its direct-action litigation efforts while serving as a leader of the securities-fraud team.

She previously headed a direct-action practice and developed extensive securities-class experience, a combination she now applies when investors must choose between aggregate and individualized remedies.

Hallowell has served as an officer of the Institute for Law and Economic Policy and previously co-chaired Labaton Sucharow’s Women’s Networking and Mentoring Initiative.

She earned her B.A. from Occidental College and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law.