James Benedict

Chairman, Litigation Department

Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP

James N. Benedict is the chairman of the Litigation Department of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP and head of its Securities Litigation Practice Group. Mr. Benedict specializes in complex commercial litigation, with emphasis on multiparty class and derivative suits in state and federal courts throughout the nation. In his more than 35 years of practice, Mr. Benedict has handled a wide variety of trial and appellate civil litigation, involving securities, antitrust and other issues for some of the largest and best known corporations in America. Mr. Benedict has handled more than 150 major class and shareholder derivative actions alleging violations of state and federal antitrust and securities laws. These include some of the largest class actions in the nation. In addition, Mr. Benedict has had more than 30 years of experience representing mutual fund investment advisers and their affiliates in litigation under the federal securities laws. During this period, Mr. Benedict has successfully defended more than 100 excessive management fee suits and other actions mounted against some of the largest investment advisors in the nation, including AllianceBernstein, American Century, Capital Research, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Dreyfus, Fidelity, ING, Legg Mason, Merrill Lynch, Neuberger Berman, Prudential, and SunAmerica. These suits include Gartenberg v. Merrill Lynch Asset Management, Inc., which was the first case of its kind to be tried on the merits under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and remains the leading case in that area; and Krinsk v. Fund Asset Management Inc., the first case to be tried involving the propriety of a Rule 12b-1 distribution plan. Most recently, Mr. Benedict successfully tried the Capital Research excessive fees action, which challenged the receipt by Capital Research and its affiliates of more than $15 billion in investment advisory, transfer agency, Rule 12b-1, and administrative fees paid by eight of the largest American Funds over the period 2003-2009. After a two week trial, the court rendered a 105 page opinion dismissing plaintiffs' complaint with prejudice. This case was one of the largest (if not the largest) securities actions ever to go to trial, and was the first excessive fee case in the mutual fund industry to be tried to judgment in more than 20 years.