Noted plaintiffs lawyer Michael Hausfeld is gone from its antitrust group, but Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll is working to strengthen that practice. The firm added two partners who start today in its complex antitrust litigation practice. Kit Pierson will be joining the D.C. office, and Doug Richards will be the managing partner of the firm’s New York office.
“I’ve worked as co-counsel with Cohen Milstein before, and this was really a great opportunity for me,” says Richards.
Hausfeld was expelled from the firm back in November. The two sides are still involved in a dispute over cash and clients.
Richards declined to discuss Hausfeld’s exit and whether it had any impact on his decision to join the firm. Pierson says the antitrust expert's departure “wasn’t really an issue.”
Both Pierson and Richards say they were drawn to Cohen Milstein because of the plaintiffs work the firm does and because of friendships the two have with partners Benjamin Brown, Joseph Sellers, Daniel Small, and Steven Toll.
Pierson spent the past 11 years at Heller Ehrman in its Washington office and handled a “mixed bag” of cases representing defendants and plaintiffs. For instance, while at the San Francisco-based firm, Pierson worked with clients such as Microsoft and 3M. He also, however, handled pro bono work representing some of the Guantánamo Bay detainees. When Heller died in September, Pierson says he made an “ideological decision” to handle only plaintiffs cases. With Cohen Milstein, Pierson says he will continue his work with the Guantánamo detainees.
Richards, who comes from plaintiffs class-action firm Pomerantz Haudek Block Grossman & Gross, says he finds working the plaintiffs side of cases "more enjoyable and more rewarding." Before joining Pomerantz in 2007, Richards had spent about three years as general counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
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