Lisa Bugni

Litigation

San Francisco

Lisa Bugni has accumulated a robust 17-year track record of defending securities class actions and shareholder disputes.

Her legal career began with a pivotal decision during law school, where she chose the path of litigation over corporate law. This decision was influenced by her summer associate experience, where she found a strong fit with the commercial litigation group at her firm.

"When an opportunity to join a securities litigation group presented itself to me as a mid-level associate, it really was the best of both worlds," Bugni said. "I have been able to be involved during the negotiation phase of corporate mergers, advise on public company disclosure obligations and defend lawsuits involving both."

A notable case in her career involved representing the former executives of American Addiction Centers in a complex securities class action. The case was fraught with challenges, including an SEC inquiry, the company's bankruptcy and the executives' departure from the company. Additionally, the judge assigned to the case was relatively new to the bench and to securities cases, Bugni said.

"One of the main gating stages for these cases is whether they are properly certifiable as a class action, and often times class certification is granted," she said. "In this case, we raised a relatively new argument that plaintiff's theory of loss causation could not be squared with their theory of liability on a class-wide basis because it depended, among other things, on the individual investor's risk tolerance at varying points of time. So, we had to convince a new judge in a difficult case to accept a relatively new argument and deny class certification."

Bugni added that with exceptional drafting and expert support from Paul Zurek at Cornerstone Research, her team achieved a significant victory by obtaining a denial of class certification for a substantial portion of the case.

"We were able to settle the case after that with our individual clients not paying anything," Bugni said.

Bugni said one of the major trends in securities class actions is that plaintiffs are demanding a higher settlement as a percentage of loss to resolve the case.

"This is resulting in securities cases being litigated through discovery, summary judgment, and trial more than in the past, and oftentimes requiring a decision from the presiding court on key issues before the parties are able to reach an amicable resolution," she said. "The importance of preparing every case as if it is going to trial is absolutely critical now. This is how I was taught from the very beginning of my practice, so not a major change for me, but does allow me to put my deposition and trial skills to work."