James N. Benedict

+1-212-530-5696
jbenedict@milbank.com
 
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James N. Benedict is the chairman of the Litigation Department of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP and head of its Securities Litigation Practice Group.  He is resident in the New York office.

Prior to joining Milbank, Mr. Benedict was a partner at Clifford Chance (formerly Rogers & Wells) since 1982 where he served as head of the Global Litigation & Dispute Resolution Practice and, before that, as managing partner for the Americas Region.  Mr. Benedict was the recipient of the 2009 Chambers USA Award for Excellence in Securities Litigation and has recently been selected by Lawdragon magazine as one of the 500 leading lawyers in America, one of the nation’s 500 top litigators, and also as one of the 100 Lawyers You Need to Know in Securities Litigation.  He has also been recognized as a leading litigator by The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500, Benchmark Litigation, the Guide to the World’s Leading Litigation Lawyers, and New York Super Lawyers.  Mr. Benedict specializes in complex commercial litigation, with emphasis on multiparty class and derivative suits in state and federal courts throughout the nation.  In his more than 35 years of practice, Mr. Benedict has handled a wide variety of trial and appellate civil litigation, involving securities, antitrust and other issues for some of the largest and best known corporations in America, including Citigroup, Inc., MasterCard International Incorporated, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., Prudential Financial and The Coca-Cola Company.

Mr. Benedict has handled more than 150 major class and shareholder derivative actions alleging violations of state and federal antitrust and securities laws.  These include some of the largest class actions in the nation.  For example, Mr. Benedict has acted as the lead attorney defending clients in In re Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation (S.D.N.Y.), In re Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. Research Reports Securities Litigation (S.D.N.Y.), In re Enron Corporation Securities, Derivatives and ERISA Litigation (S.D. Tex.), In re Mutual Funds Investment Litigation (D. Md.), and In re VisaCheck/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation (S.D.N.Y.).

In addition, Mr. Benedict has had more than 30 years of experience representing mutual fund investment advisers and their affiliates in litigation under the federal securities laws.  During this period, Mr. Benedict has successfully defended more than 100 excessive management fee suits and other actions mounted against some of the largest investment advisors in the nation, including AllianceBernstein, American Century, Capital Research, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Dreyfus, Fidelity, ING, Legg Mason, Merrill Lynch, Neuberger Berman, Prudential, and SunAmerica.  These suits include Gartenberg v. Merrill Lynch Asset Management, Inc., which was the first case of its kind to be tried on the merits under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and remains the leading case in that area; and Krinsk v. Fund Asset Management Inc., the first case to be tried involving the propriety of a Rule 12b-1 distribution plan.

Most recently, Mr. Benedict successfully tried the Capital Research excessive fees action, which challenged the receipt by Capital Research and its affiliates of more than $15 billion in investment advisory, transfer agency, Rule 12b-1, and administrative fees paid by eight of the largest American Funds over the period 2003-2009.  After a two week trial, the court rendered a 105 page opinion dismissing plaintiffs' complaint with prejudice.  In re American Mutual Funds Fee Litigation, No. CV 04-5593 GAF (RNBx) (C.D. Cal. Dec. 28, 2009).  This case was one of the largest (if not the largest) securities actions ever to go to trial, and was the first excessive fee case  in the mutual fund industry to be tried to judgment in more than 20 years.

Mr. Benedict is currently handling numerous securities class actions and derivative suits resulting from the current credit crunch and previous mutual fund scandal.  These cases involve a wide variety of products and issues, including subprime mortgages, auction rate securities, collateralized debt obligations, initial public offerings, prospectus disclosures and mutual fund management fees.

Mr. Benedict has been active in professional and charitable activities.  He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Mutual Fund Directors Forum, and a member of the Board of Editors of The Review of Securities and Commodities Regulation, the Securities and Class Action Litigation Report, and the Villanova Journal of Law and Investment Management.  He is also a member of the American Bar Association, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Federal Bar Council, and the New York State Bar Association.  He is a trustee of the United States Ski and Snowboard Team Foundation and a member of the Board of Trustees at Albany Law School.  Mr. Benedict has previously served as a trustee for St. Lawrence University, as president of both his college and law school alumni associations, and as a director of several other charitable and community organizations.

Mr. Benedict received a B.A. magna cum laude in 1971 from St. Lawrence University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and a J.D. in 1974 from Albany Law School at Union University, where he was lead articles editor of the Albany Law Review.  Mr. Benedict regularly lectures at industry conferences and other forums, and has published more than three dozen articles which have appeared in numerous publications, including the Cornell Law Review, New York University Law Review and The Review of Securities and Commodities Regulation.