We Protect Shareholders

Heins Mills is a leading advocate for individual and institutional investors. As sole lead counsel, we achieved two of the largest recoveries in the history of securities fraud class action litigation:

  • On behalf of AOL and Time Warner shareholders, we achieved a settlement of $2.65 billion in In re AOL Time Warner, Inc. Securities Litigation, MDL No. 1500 (S.D.N.Y.). Of that amount, $2.4 billion was paid by media giant Time Warner and $100 million was paid by its financial auditor, Ernst & Young. The Department of Justice also contributed $150 million from a settlement it reached with Time Warner in a related enforcement action.
  • In In re Broadcom Corp. Securities Litigation, No. 01-cv-275 (C.D. Cal.), we recovered $150 million for a class of investors in Broadcom, one of the leading providers of microprocessors enabling broadband communications.

The firm has also played leadership roles in a variety of other securities fraud class litigation. As lead counsel for class investors in In re Mercury Finance Company Securities Litigation, No. 97 C 3035 (N.D. Ill.), for example, we negotiated a settlement with Mercury's auditing firm for $40.5 million, then one of the largest amounts ever recovered from an accounting firm for violations of the securities laws. In addition, we recovered more than $15 million in total from Mercury's officers and directors, and from Mercury itself, even though the company was in bankruptcy.

We served as liaison counsel in Första AP-fonden v. St. Jude Medical, Inc., 0:12-cv-03070 (D. Minn.), a securities fraud class action alleging on behalf of purchasers of common stock of St. Jude Medical, Inc. that the company failed to disclose problems with leads it made for implantable cardiac defibrillators.

Results For Institutional Investors

We are especially proud of the results our firm has obtained for institutional investors. We have successfully represented numerous state pension funds managing billions of dollars in assets. Among them are:

  • Minnesota State Board of Investment
  • Utah State Retirement Board
  • Teachers' Retirement System of Alabama
  • Retirement Systems of Alabama
  • Judicial Retirement Fund of Alabama, Public Employees' Retirement Association of Colorado
  • A number of Taft-Hartley health, welfare and pension funds

Praise From The Judiciary

Our lawyers have earned praise from the judiciary for advocacy in securities litigation.

The presiding judge in the AOL-Time Warner case, the Hon. Shirley W. Kram, complimented our firm for its "exceptional lawyering in this case" and added that she "continues to be impressed with the quality of representation provided by [Heins Mills & Olson, P.L.C.], its prosecution of the lawsuit, and its negotiation of the settlement."

The judge who approved the Broadcom settlement, the Hon. Dickran Tevrizian, described it as "an exceptional result given the complexity of the case, and despite keenly contested and very complex facts...Class counsel's ability to obtain a favorable settlement despite formidable opposition confirms their immense skill."

How To Contact Us

Heins Mills & Olson, P.L.C., is a Minneapolis law firm that focuses on securities litigation. We can be reached at 612-338-4605, or contact us online.