$540,000 FINRA Arbitration Award for Retired Judge
This was a FINRA arbitration case that Mika Meyers filed on behalf of a retired judge. The facts were truly outrageous. The claimant, who was suffering from severe cognitive decline, was cold-called by an unscrupulous financial advisor in New York. The advisor managed to gain the claimant’s trust and confidence, before ripping him off to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.
Problem
Over a number of years, as the Claimant’s mental health declined, the financial advisor “churned” the Claimant’s account to the point that it was almost depleted. The financial advisor made out like a bandit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions. Mika Meyers filed an arbitration action against the financial advisor and the brokerage firm where he worked. The Respondents hired a well-known firm in New York to fight the case tooth and nail.
Solution
The case ended up going to a final hearing in Detroit in front of three arbitrators. For a week, the arbitrators watched as Mika Meyers methodically laid out its case against the Respondents, which included the use of a large horizontal timeline to chart how the Respondents’ churning had gotten progressively worse as the Claimant’s mental health declined. On the fourth day of the hearing, there was a surreal twist: the Respondents announced that they had fired their attorneys and asked the arbitration panel for an adjournment. When the arbitration panel denied the Respondents’ motion for adjournment, they re-hired the attorney they had fired moments before. By this time, the writing was well and truly on the wall for the Respondents.
Judgment
After closing arguments, the arbitrators deliberated and came back with an award that truly vindicated everything Mika Meyers had argued. Not only did the arbitration panel award the Claimant all of his investment losses, it also awarded the Claimant several hundred thousand dollars on top of those losses, for a total award of approximately $550,000. Another win for the good guys.
