The Paul, Weiss Litigation Department is led by a team of the country’s most accomplished trial lawyers. Our litigators handle the most complex and demanding lawsuits, class actions, government investigations, criminal prosecutions and restructurings. Our clients include Fortune 50 corporations and other prominent companies in the financial services, investment, medical device, pharmaceutical, sports, technology, energy, media and insurance industries. Every day, we are called on by chief executives, board chairs, general counsel, investors and entrepreneurs for our unmatched trial skills, sophisticated business judgment and renowned strategic advice.
Paul, Weiss Obtains Dismissal of Derivative Lawsuits Against Morgan Stanley and Van Kampen
- Client News
- October 22, 2014
Justice Marcy Friedman of the New York Supreme Court dismissed, with prejudice, two derivative suits alleging that Paul, Weiss clients Morgan Stanley Investment Advisers and Van Kampen Asset Management and their officers breached their fiduciary duties to investors and wasted corporate assets by causing seven closed end investment funds to redeem auction rate preferred securities at their liquidation value and to purchase tender option bonds and other debt securities to maintain the desired level of leverage in the funds. The decision was the culmination of a process that began in 2010, when the independent trustees of the funds received demand letters insisting that the boards take action against the firm's clients for having conceived and executed these investment strategies. The trustees appointed two Special Litigation Committees that investigated the conduct of our clients, ultimately recommending, in written reports that spanned hundreds of pages, plus exhibits, that the demands be rejected, after which the trustees moved to dismiss both litigations.
The Paul Weiss team included, among others, litigation partner Richard Rosen.