Financial Services

Preti Flaherty offers the full range of dispute resolution services when it comes to financial advisors, broker-dealers, registered investment advisors, banks, other financial institutions, and their insurers, including the following:

• Directors and officers liability
• Lenders liability and financial professional liability 
• Employment practices liability and employment disputes, including enforcement of non-competition agreements and separation agreements
• Fiduciary liability and trust errors and omissions liability
• Investor complaints, including securities fraud 
• Defense of enforcement actions by securities regulators
• Defense of enforcement actions by insurance regulators 
• ERISA
• White collar crime

Our financial services team is led by experienced trial counsel with proven track records of success in state and federal court, administrative proceedings, and in all major arbitration forums, including FINRA and AAA.  Our team includes a former state attorney general and several former prosecutors. 

Our trial attorneys are backed by off-the-bench support from transactional, corporate, tax, and trust & estates attorneys.  Our team includes an attorney who is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and an attorney with an LLM in tax. 

Representative Matters:

Financial Litigation/Dispute Resolution:

• Won $40 million international arbitration award in securities fraud case tried for three weeks in Washington, D.C. on behalf of Kingspan Group PLC of Ireland and successfully defended the award in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

• Won $7.4 million jury verdict against Bank of America (formerly Fleet National Bank) for financial planning malpractice.

• Won $419,000 arbitration award in securities arbitration tried in Boston against Morgan Stanley.

• Defended enforcement actions by the Maine Office of Securities and the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation.

• Defended enforcement actions by the Maine Bureau of Insurance.

• Defended bank in major lender liability lawsuit.

• Numerous investor claims before FINRA and its predecessors (NASD/NYSE), including claims against HSBC Bank, U.S.A., TD Bank, Bank of America, Ameriprise, Allianz Life Insurance Co., MetLife Life Insurance Co., Morgan Stanley, and others; and

• General Counsel to Maine's largest and oldest registered investment advisor.

Fiduciary Litigation:

• As counsel to Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals, we won a court order, after trial, surcharging the personal representative for excessive fees, and convinced the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to affirm the order on appeal.  Estate of Sweetland, 2001 ME 21, 770 A.2d 1017.

• On behalf of a beneficiary of a trust containing real estate, we won a court order, after trial in probate court, appointing a professional trustee to manage a trust, sell real estate, and divide trust assets in a fair manner.  In re. McKinney Family Trust, Docket No. 2002-0748 (York Cty Probate Ct).

• We defended the personal representative and beneficiary of an estate accused of not timely closing an estate and allowing one of the beneficiaries to benefit from estate assets to the exclusion of others while the estate remained open. We settled the claim on satisfactory terms at mediation.  Estate of McLain, Docket No. 1999-0735 (Cumberland Cty Probate Ct).

• Having objected to the proposed sale of a corporation owned by a family trust, our client – a beneficiary of the trust – turned to us for assistance in negotiating and re-structuring the sale on acceptable terms.  We avoided protracted and difficult family litigation and settled the matter on satisfactory terms prior to suit at mediation.