William C. Fredericks

WILLIAM C. FREDERICKS holds a B.A. (with high honors) from Swarthmore College (Pa.), an M. Litt. in International Relations from Oxford University (England), and a J.D. from Columbia University Law School (N.Y.).

Mr. Fredericks is a partner in the firm’s New York office.  In addition to serving as lead counsel on behalf of investors in several pending securities fraud actions, Mr. Fredericks also represents investors in the pending FX antitrust litigation brought against over a dozen leading banks based on their involvement in manipulating foreign exchange (“FX”) rates and spreads, and in pending proceedings relating to data security breaches at FaceBook, Inc. 

At Columbia Law School, Mr. Fredericks was a three-time Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, a Columbia University International Fellow, Articles Editor of The Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, and winner of Columbia’s Beck Prize (property law), Toppan Prize (advanced constitutional law) and Greenbaum Prize (written advocacy). A three-judge panel chaired by the late Justice Antonin Scalia also awarded Mr. Fredericks the Thomas E. Dewey Prize for best oral argument in the final round of Columbia’s Stone Moot Court Honor Competition.  After clerking for the Hon. Robert S. Gawthrop III (E.D. Pa.) in Philadelphia, Mr. Fredericks spent seven years practicing securities and complex commercial litigation at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York before moving to the plaintiffs’ side of the bar in 1996.

Mr. Fredericks has represented investors as a lead or co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in dozens of securities class actions, including In re Wachovia Preferred Securities and Bond/Notes Litig. (S.D.N.Y.) (total settlements of $627 million, reflecting the largest recovery ever in a pure Securities Act case not involving any parallel government fraud claims); In re Rite Aid Securities Litig. (E.D. Pa.) (total settlements of $323 million, including the then-second largest securities fraud settlement ever against a Big Four accounting firm); In re Sears Roebuck & Co. Sec. Litig. (N.D. Ill.) ($215 million settlement, representing the then-largest §10(b) class action recovery in an action that did not involve either a financial restatement or parallel government fraud claims); In re State Street Bank and Trust Co. ERISA Litig. (S.D.N.Y.) (one of the largest ERISA class settlements to date); In re King Digital Sec. Enter. PLC Shareholder Litig. (Super. Ct. San Fran. Cty.) ($18.5 million settlement, representing one of the largest state court §11 class action recoveries to date); and Irvine v. ImClone Systems, Inc. (S.D.N.Y.) ($75 million settlement).  A consortium of plaintiffs’ counsel also chose Mr. Fredericks to present the (successful) oral argument in opposition to defendants’ efforts to dismiss (on grounds of standing) over fifteen separate securities fraud cases before a three judge panel in In re Mutual Fund Investing Litig. (see 519 F. Supp. 2d 580 (D.Md. 2007)), which later settled for a combined total of several hundred million dollars.  Mr. Fredericks also played a leading role on the team that obtained a rare 9-0 decision for securities fraud plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court in Merck & Co., Inc. v. Reynolds (which later settled for $1.052 billion), and he has also coauthored amicus briefs on behalf of clients in a number of other Supreme Court cases (including Halliburton, Amgen, ANZ Securities and Cyan) involving various significant securities law issues. Mr. Fredericks has also represented clients in litigating claims in federal bankruptcy court proceedings, and has obtained substantial recoveries from a bankrupt corporation’s officers, law firm and outside auditors on behalf of a court-appointed Trustee of a creditor’s trust.  See In re Friedman’s, Inc., 394 B.R. 623 (S.D. Ga.2008).  He also currently represents a putative class of large commercial customers of a bankrupt utility in breach of contract proceedings pending before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio. 

Mr. Fredericks has been recognized in the 2012-19 editions of “America’s Best Lawyers” in the field of commercial litigation, in “Who’s Who in American Law” (Marquis), and in the New York City “SuperLawyers” listings for securities litigation (2013-19). He has been a frequent panelist on various securities litigation programs sponsored by the Practising Law Institute (PLI) – including ten years as a panelist on civil liabilities under the federal Securities Act – and has lectured overseas on American class action litigation on behalf of the American Law Institute/American Bar Association (ALI/ABA). He is also the former chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Military Affairs and Justice), and a member of the Federal Bar Council.