Barbara Hart is a principal at Grant & Eisenhofer and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. Ms. Hart has nearly three decades of experience as a leader in plaintiffs’ litigation. She has represented institutional investors, including many public pension funds, in securities and antitrust litigation and served as lead counsel in 4 of the top 100 securities class action settlements. Ms. Hart has also achieved substantive antitrust and False Claims Act/Qui Tam settlements on behalf of her clients.
In addition, Ms. Hart currently represents approximately 45 adult survivors of sexual abuse who are bringing claims against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Maryknoll, Rockefeller University Hospital and the Boy Scouts of America. Ms. Hart is pioneering these claims in light of a change in New York law known as the Child Victims Act.
Prior to joining G&E, Ms. Hart was President and CEO of a firm focusing on securities and antitrust litigation, and before that, she spent 17 years representing plaintiffs at the New York office of a complex financial litigation firm. Notably, Ms. Hart obtained a $219 million recovery for investors, including New York trade unions, who fell victim to the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Judge McMahon praised the “unprecedented global settlement” and recognized that Ms. Hart “carried the laboring oar.” Judge McMahon continued: “Your clients – all of them – have been well served . . . rarely has there been a more transparent settlement negotiation. It could serve as a prototype.”
Other representative casework includes a $457 million securities recovery serving the Office of the Treasurer of the State of Connecticut as lead plaintiff; a $285 million settlement in the El Paso securities litigation; a $169 million settlement in securities class litigation against Juniper Networks involving options backdating; a $53 million securities class action settlement on behalf of shareholders of Community Health Systems Inc.; and a $22.4 million settlement on behalf of a whistleblower who alleged false Medicaid billing, among many others. Ms. Hart is also co-lead counsel in an antitrust class action representing a putative end-user class of indirect purchasers claiming that the county’s major chemical manufacturers schemed to inflate the price of caustic soda.
Ms. Hart is a member of Thirty Percent Coalition, a group representing many trillions of dollars of assets under management advocating for diversity on corporate boards. In March 2020, Ms. Hart received the EPIQ award for the Coalition’s advocacy for the advancement of women. Ms. Hart also currently serves, at the behest of the Westchester County Executive, on the Police Reform & Reinvention Task Force preparing a report due to the State of New York. She additionally serves as a director on the Westchester Medical Center Foundation Board.
Widely-spoken and published on various topics in securities and antitrust law, Ms. Hart also co-edited the “New York Antitrust and Consumer Protection Law” handbook. She is a Member of the New York State Bar Antitrust Executive Committee as to which she served as the 2014 Section Chair. Ms. Hart has also successfully represented institutional investor clients as amici curiae on various matters, including on New York’s Martin Act.
Ms. Hart was selected to the Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumers Lawyers Guide for the past three years. She was also selected to the 2023 and 2024 Lawdragon 500 Leading Civil Rights & Plaintiff Employment Lawyers guide, and the 2024 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers Guide for Securities & Commercial Litigation. She has also been selected for inclusion to the list of New York Super Lawyers for nine years. She received her undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University, her M.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law where she was on the Dean’s List and a member of the Fordham Law Review.