Andrew N. Friedman  Andrew Friedman, a Partner at the Firm, joined Cohen Milstein in 1985. He is the head of the Consumer Protection practice group and a member of the Securities Fraud/Investor Protection practice group.
In the consumer protection area, Mr. Friedman is litigating numerous class actions including cases relating to various insurance companies failure to deliver promised benefits to thousands of persons who held flood insurance policies and suffered damage to their houses in September 2003 from Hurricane Isabel, Howell v. State Farm Insurance (D. Md.) and defective automobile engine coolants, In re General Motors Dex-Cool Products Liability Litigation (S.D. Ill). He has been instrumental in securing significant recoveries on behalf of thousands of consumers. He was one of the principal counsel in Snyder v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (Sup. Ct., Onondaga Cnty, N.Y.), a class action that resulted in a settlement valued at between $85 million and $103 million. As one of two co-lead counsel in a class action against Thomson Consumer Electronics, Mr. Friedman reached a court-approved agreement that made up to $100 million available for persons who paid for unreimbursed repairs to televisions.
Mr. Friedman also has been involved in many successful securities class actions. In July, 2005, Mr. Friedman served as one of lead trial counsel at the trial of a certified class action in In re Globalstar Secururites Litigation in the United States District court for the Southern District of New York. Near the end of the second week of trial, a cash settlement of $20 million was reached for the benefit of the certified class. The settlement was preliminarily approved by Judge P. Kevin Castel, who was highly complimentary of counsel: "This case has been litigated by top trial lawyers, each of whom, as to both lead counsel and the other counsel in the case, have been exceptionally fine in their presentation of the evidence. Mr. Toll, Mr. Friedman, Mr. Shalov, their colleagues Mr. Devore, Ms. Peterson, have all done a terrific job in presenting the case for the plaintiffs."
In addition, Mr. Friedman served as one of co-lead or principal counsel in Norman Frank et al. v. David L. Paul (recovery of over $18 million); In re Jiffy Lube Securities Litigation (D. Md.) (recovery of over $12 million); and In re Immunex Securities Litigation (W.D.Wash.) (recovery of $14 million, then the largest securities class action settlement in Seattle). Mr. Friedman was one of the Firm's attorneys selected by the County of Cuyahoga, Ohio to prosecute a lawsuit that sought to recover losses from the County's Secured Assets Fund Earnings Program (S.A.F.E.). The lawsuit alleged that broker/dealers and a financial institution assisted the County in engaging in unsuitable and inappropriate investments and trading activity. The case settled favorably for $9.5 million.
Mr. Friedman has been a speaker on numerous panels for legal education seminars and institutional investor conferences on the issues of securities class actions, accounting fraud and corporate governance. He was featured in a November 15, 1997 Washington Post article about securities class actions and profiled in the April 14, 2000 edition of The Washington Business Journal. In 2007, LawDragon named Mr. Friedman as one of the 3,000 Leading Plaintiffs' Lawyers in America.
Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Mr. Friedman served as an attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Mr. Friedman graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in Psychology (1980, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and is a 1983 graduate of the National Law Center, George Washington University.
Mr. Friedman is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and New York.
Contact: afriedman@cmht.com Practice Areas: |
