Lee D. Rudy, a partner of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, practices in the area of corporate governance litigation, with a focus on transactional and derivative cases. Representing both institutional and individual shareholders in these actions, he has helped cause significant monetary and corporate governance improvements for those companies and their shareholders.
Many of Lee’s notable successes have come after, or on the eve of, a high-profile bench or jury trial. In 2011, Lee served as co-lead trial counsel in the landmark case against Southern Peru Copper Corporation, which resulted in a $2 billion trial verdict against Southern Peru’s majority stockholder, believed to be the largest trial verdict for stockholders in history. More recently, in 2023, Lee helped lead a jury trial against the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) for unfairly diverting the profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from stockholders to the U.S. Treasury Department. After a three-week trial, the jury awarded stockholders $612 million. Lee also recently served as co-lead counsel in an action challenging Shari Redstone’s efforts to merge CBS and Viacom, which settled for $167.5 million shortly before trial. Lee served as co-lead trial counsel against Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg challenging Facebook’s plan to issue a new class of nonvoting stock to entrench Zuckerberg as the company’s majority stockholder. Facebook abandoned its plan to issue the nonvoting stock just two days before trial. Lee also co-led a massive insider trading case against Pershing Square, its founder Bill Ackman, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals, relating to Pershing’s buying nearly 10% of the stock of Allergan, Inc. from unsuspecting Allergan stockholders in advance of Valeant launching a tender offer to buy Allergan. The high-profile case settled for $250 million just weeks before trial. Lee previously served as lead counsel in dozens of high profile derivative actions relating to the “backdating” of stock options.
Prior to civil practice, Lee served for several years as an Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan (NY) District Attorney’s Office, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the US Attorney’s Office (DNJ), where he tried dozens of jury cases to verdict.
Lee serves on the boards of Legacy Youth Tennis & Education and the Becket-Chimney Corners YMCA.
Updated Sep 2024
