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John P. ("Sean") Coffey
Mr. Coffey is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy ("U.S.N.A."), receiving a B.S.
in Ocean Engineering, with merit, in 1978. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University
Law Center in 1987, where he was Articles Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, a member of the
Order of the
Coif, and recipient of the Charles A. Keigwin Award for academic excellence.
Before graduating from law school, Mr. Coffey was a Commissioned Officer in the
United States Navy, where he served as a P-3C Orion patrol plane mission commander, an Intern in the
Organization for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the personal military aide to Vice President George H.W. Bush.
After leaving active duty to pursue his legal career, Mr. Coffey continued to serve in the
Navy Reserve, where he commanded a P-3C squadron and the Reserve component of the Enterprise carrier
battle group staff, and served for four years as a Captain in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
at the Pentagon. In August 2004, he retired from the Navy after thirty years of uniformed service.
Mr. Coffey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District
of New York from 1991 to 1995, where he conducted numerous complex fraud investigations and tried many cases
to verdict.
Since joining BLB&G in 1998, Mr. Coffey has served as the lead trial
attorney in two of the most notable fraud cases ever to go to trial. In April 2005, Mr. Coffey and his
BLB&G team completed their prosecution of the WorldCom
securities class action -- a prosecution that
yielded a record-breaking recovery for defrauded investors of over $6.15 billion -- by taking the lone
non-settling defendant, WorldCom's former auditor Arthur Andersen LLP, to trial. Mr. Coffey's role in
the WorldCom prosecution
was featured in a December 2004 article in The American Lawyer entitled
"Taking Citi To School"
and a November 2005 article in The American Lawyer entitled
"Breaking The Banks."
In 2002, in another trial against Andersen, this time arising out of the
collapse of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona,
BFA Liquidation Trust v. Arthur Andersen LLP, the largest
non-profit bankruptcy in U.S. history, Mr. Coffey obtained a $217 million settlement, one of the largest
amounts ever paid by an accounting firm.
Mr. Coffey currently serves as court-appointed Lead Counsel representing investors in
the Schering-Plough, Omnicom,
HealthSouth, Merck,
Refco,
Delphi, and Converium litigations,
and copyright holders in the Premier League v. YouTube class action.
Mr. Coffey has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, American Lawyer,
and BusinessWeek, and was featured
on "The
Wall Street Fix" on PBS' Frontline. Mr. Coffey and senior BLB&G partner Max Berger were
named two of the 2005 "Winning Attorneys of the Year"
by the National Law Journal, and the September 2005
issue of Bloomberg Markets profiled Mr. Coffey as
"Wall Street's New Nemesis."
Prior to joining BLB&G, Mr. Coffey was a litigation partner with Latham & Watkins
and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham University. He serves as Vice President of the
U.S.N.A. Class of 1978 and is a
member of the Board of Directors of The Community Fund of Bronxville, Eastchester, Tuckahoe,
Inc., in Westchester County, N.Y. He is also a member of the Federal Bar
Council, the American Bar Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of
New York (including its newly-formed Securities Litigation Committee), the American Association for Justice, and the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation.
ADMISSIONS: Admitted to bar, 1988, New York. 1989, U.S. District Court,
Southern District of New York. 1992, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. 1995, U.S.
District Court, Western District of New York. 1998, U.S. District Court, Eastern
District of New York. 1999, New Jersey. 2007, U.S. Court of Appeals, Third
Circuit.
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