Class and Derivative Actions

Our Class and Derivative Actions Group represents industry leading companies and institutions in high-stakes cases nationwide. In fact, defense of class actions has been at the heart of Bryan Cave’s litigation practice for more than 25 years, including defending class claims in antitrust, securities and derivative actions, as well as class consumer fraud, breach of warranty, contract, environmental tort and other regulatory claims against manufacturers, retailers, financial institutions and insurance carriers. Our approach is to team class action litigators with lawyers versed in the particular subject matter of the action. We also team with lawyers who practice before regulatory agencies and the Department of Justice or local law enforcement agencies, as appropriate.

We have handled more than 700 class action lawsuits in the last five years, and we are currently handling more than 200 class actions. In 2011 alone, approximately 290 of our lawyers worked on class action defense matters in more than 75 venues in 31 states and territories. We offer depth of talent in every U.S. office, as well as the U.K. and Continental Europe (where class claims are just beginning). We have defended hundreds of class claims, in all areas of substantive law, in virtually every jurisdiction in the United States and Canada. We plan a defense most suitable for the goals and budget of each client. We have tried class claims to judgment before judges and juries, and we believe anticipating that possibility is the most effective defense.

Bryan Cave ranked second in the 2012 BTI Consulting Group’s “BTI Client Service 30” report, an annual survey evaluating individual law firm performance through the eyes of their clients. The report compiles information gathered about more than 650 law firms serving Fortune 1000 companies. Clients ranked us as “best of the best” for our commitment to help and praised us for “efficiency” and “listening to client demands.” Clients also noted that Bryan Cave "is always surveying for changing customer needs" allowing us to "work on alternative fee arrangements that make sense for both parties."

Bryan Cave class action and derivative action clients have included H&R Block, Inc., Wells Fargo Advisors, Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, George K. Baum & Company, Ralcorp Holdings, Inc., Monsanto Company, Merck & Co., Inc., Emerson Electric Co., The Boeing Company, McDonnell Douglas Corp., UnitedHealth Group, Ford Motor Co., Mercedes-Benz USA, Union Pacific Railroad, Evenflo Company, Inc., Michelin North America, Inc., Ferrellgas, BJC HealthCare and Enterprise Holdings, among others including leading national bank entities.

Cost-Effective Litigation

Bryan Cave staffs cases cost-effectively, using the most efficient mix of resources around the firm. With experienced trial lawyers throughout our offices, we can leverage our lower cost locations to provide clients with the best service at the best possible rates. To align our interests with our clients’ interests and give our clients more certainty with respect to cost, we embrace a variety of alternative fee arrangements. We can price discrete stages of litigation, propose risk-sharing arrangements or develop other non-hourly pricing structures to meet our clients’ objectives.

We have also invested time, thought and resources in seeking out non-traditional solutions to lowering legal costs associated with class claims. These include a variety of case management tools, from client-specific extranet sites, linked to an ongoing matter and designed to keep attorneys and clients informed of important case developments, to risk assessment and management applications that can weigh the benefits of early settlement versus going to trial.

To address the rising costs of eDiscovery, we adopted an innovative approach that allows us to provide alternative fee arrangements, including up-front cost estimates for document review, based on the volume of data, not on hours of review time. Our powerful concept-searching software exponentially speeds review time by organizing documents by "concept" or "issue" instead of a traditional linear, custodian-by-custodian basis. We have a dedicated eDiscovery Services and Accelerated Review Team, a core group of trained Bryan Cave eDiscovery lawyers, and when needed can bring on teams of 50 or more contract lawyers in our secure, state-of-the-art discovery annex in St. Louis.