Overview
Markham Leventhal has a national litigation practice focusing on the defense of financial institutions, insurers, and other sophisticated businesses in federal and state courts across the United States. Markham has defended more than 150 class actions and has extensive experience managing multijurisdictional litigation, including the simultaneous defense of multiple class actions in different states and the management of parallel civil and regulatory proceedings. He has served as lead or national coordinating counsel in multiple jurisdictions including New York, New Jersey, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, D.C., Washington, and West Virginia. Markham has also briefed positions both for and against motions to transfer filed with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and has argued before the MDL Panel.
Markham is frequently called upon to defend class actions and other high-exposure cases involving claims of fraud, inadequate disclosure, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, bad faith, regulatory violations, deceptive trade practices, false advertising, and alleged statutory violations of RICO, ERISA, the TCPA, the FLSA, privacy statutes, antitrust statutes, and state consumer protection laws. His litigation experience includes insurance coverage litigation, reinsurance litigation, securities litigation, unfair competition, fraudulent transfer litigation, trademark and copyright infringement, arbitration, and federal and state court appeals.
Markham serves as co-chair of the firm's Life, Annuity, and Retirement Solutions Industry Group, and he has defended cases involving virtually every insurance or financial product issued by the life, annuity, and retirement industries, including national ERISA class actions involving retirement plans.
Markham has also served as lead counsel in NAIC multistate examinations, disputes with individual state insurance regulators, and he has defended against civil investigative demands, regulatory subpoenas, and lawsuits brought by state attorneys general and other governmental agencies.
In addition to his defense work, Markham frequently assists clients in analyzing class action exposure and avoiding or mitigating the risk of class action litigation through corrective measures and the design of consumer outreach or remediation programs.
A veteran appellate practitioner, Markham has served as lead counsel in appellate matters before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits, and state appellate courts throughout the country.
Markham is a member of the Class Actions and Derivative Suits Committee of the ABA Section of Litigation, the DRI’s Data Management and Security Committee, and The Sedona Conference Working Group on Data Security and Privacy Liability.
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