Steven J. Toll
Steven J. Toll joined the Firm in 1979 and has been lead or principal counsel in some of the most highly publicized stock fraud cases over the past 28 years. He has been Managing Partner of the Firm since 1997 and is Head of the Securities Fraud/Investor Protection practice group. Mr. Toll was profiled in the February 1996 Washington Business Journal as one of five attorneys that stand out as the “cream of the crop” in the Washington D.C. legal community. In the Fall 2006 edition of LawDragon, he was named as one of the 500 Leading Lawyers in America.
In July 2005, Mr. Toll was lead trial counsel in one of the few securities class actions to go to trial involving Globalstar, a satellite manufacturer. Mr. Toll successfully argued the motions before and during trial and ultimately achieved a settlement of $20 million shortly before the case was scheduled to go to the jury. In approving the settlement, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel remarked that Mr. Toll and his colleagues had “done a terrific job in presenting the case for the plaintiffs.”
Some of Mr. Toll’s other notable cases include those against Lucent Technologies, which was settled in 2001 for approximately $575 million, at the time, the second largest securities class action settlement ever achieved; Southmark Securities Litigation, where he helped achieve a settlement of $70 million from the company’s auditors, Drexel Burnham and Michael Milken; Norman v. Salomon Smith Barney, where he negotiated a $50 million settlement on behalf of customers of Salomon’s Guided Portfolio Management Program, who alleged that Salomon invested their money in companies in order to boost Salomon’s investment banking business, In re ECI Telecom Securities Litigation (E.D.Va.)(telecom company accused of presenting false revenue and earnings figures; recovery of $22.75 million); Gilat Securities Litigation (company accused of misreporting revenue for a period of years -- recovery of $20 million).
Mr. Toll also served as co-lead counsel in one of the most publicized frauds of the 1990s -- Cascade International (S.D. Fla.) where the mastermind of the fraud, Victor Incendy, is still a fugitive from justice. The case settled on the eve of trial against Raymond James Inc. -- the only securities class action ever successfully litigated against a brokerage firm for its role as a research analyst.
He is currently leading the Firm’s team serving as co-lead counsel in one of the most highly publicized fraud cases of this era, the securities fraud class action involving Parmalat, the Italian dairy manufacturer; the case is known as Europe’s “Enron,” because of the similarities of the fraudulent schemes and the non-existence of billions of dollars of assets that had been recorded on Parmalat’s financial statements. He is also heading up numerous securities fraud cases against other public companies.
He has written for and spoken at various conferences about securities law issues, including, inter alia, The Plaintiffs’ Perspective, Securities Regulation and the New Law, National Legal Center for the Public Interest, No. 1, Sept. 1996; The Sarbanes-Oxley Bill Provides No Assistance To Investors Seeking To Recovery From Corporate Fraud, ABA Annual Meeting, August 2002; and The Analyst Cases Involving Merrill Lynch, and Its Internet Analyst Henry Blodget, and Salomon Smith Barney and Its Telecommunications Analyst Jack Grubman, Mass Torts Made Perfect (presented January 2003).
Mr. Toll is an honors graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (B.S., Accounting, cum laude, 1972). He graduated from Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1975) where he was Special Project Editor of the Tax Lawyer.
Mr. Toll is admitted to practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Contact: stoll@cmht.com.
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