Marc T.G. Dworsky, Partner, Munger Tolles & Olson LLP

Marc Dworsky was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He received his B.A. from York University (1983) and his LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School (1986), where he was the Gold Medalist and received the Viscount Bennett Fellowship awarded annually to the most outstanding law student in Canada. In 1986, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Mr. Justice G.V. La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada, and in 1987, received his LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he specialized in comparative constitutional law. Mr. Dworsky has been a partner of Munger, Tolles & Olson since 1995. In 2011, he was named to the Daily Journal’s annual list of “Top 100” lawyers in California. He was previously named a Southern California Super Lawyer in 2004 and 2005, and in 2006 was one of 134 lawyers nation-wide named to the Client Services All-Star Team compiled by BTI Consulting Group based on its survey of general counsels at over 200Fortune 1000 companies. Mr. Dworsky is admitted to practice in California, New York, and British Columbia, Canada.

Mr. Dworsky’s practice primarily involves counseling, crisis management, and complex and high-stakes litigation in federal and state courts nationwide, with particular but not exclusive emphasis in the financial sector.

Mr. Dworsky’s crisis management experience ranges from his role in the 1990s as one of the lead lawyers heading up the defense of Merrill Lynch in the multi-billion dollar litigation brought against it by Orange County and other California municipalities in the wake of Orange County’s bankruptcy, to serving as lead national counsel assisting Wells Fargo in managing its mortgage-based exposure, including as lead counsel in all class and individual litigation nationwide by institutional investors in Wells Fargo-sponsored residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS). Mr. Dworsky serves as lead counsel guiding multidisciplinary teams of lawyers in several other multibillion dollar cases – including defending Bank of America in a $10 billion MBS lawsuit brought by AIG, and in lawsuits by BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank in New York and Florida seeking $1.7 billion in losses plaintiffs sustained as noteholders in Ocala Funding, an SPE that funded mortgages originated by the nation’s largest (and now defunct) nondepositary residential mortgage lender, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW). Mr. Dworsky is also defending Wells Fargo in a series of class, mass and individual actions by investors in a medical factoring enterprise for which Wells Fargo served as indenture trustee. In July 2011, in the first of this generation of RMBS class actions to settle, Wells Fargo reached a $125 million settlement following claims that the bank made misrepresentations in connection with the sale of more than $35 billion in mortgage-backed securities certificates. The settlement was widely reported in the press.

A lot of Mr. Dworsky’s work occurs outside of the litigation process and beyond the public eye: in the last year alone, Mr. Dworsky led teams that resolved two nine-figure disputes: the first a dispute between Merrill Lynch’s Asia Real Estate Fund and the Fund’s international partners, and the second between two multinational corporations involving mortgage repurchase liability.

More broadly, Mr. Dworsky’s expertise includes representing corporate, director and officer defendants, including Bank of America (and Merrill Lynch), Wells Fargo (and Wachovia), Northrop Grumman, The Coca-Cola Company, Citi (and Salomon), Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, General Electric’s WMC Mortgage Company, and UBS (and PaineWebber), in a variety of high-profile class, individual, mass and derivative lawsuits, representing investment banks and asset management firms, and their employees, in matters ranging from institutional client disputes to regulatory investigations and challenges, to other, broader challenges affecting their business practices.

By way of example, in recent years Mr. Dworsky has represented Merrill Lynch in litigation throughout the country concerning its HOLDRs products; its marketing and sales of Class B mutual fund shares; numerous class action lawsuits involving debt or equity underwritings by the company; litigation involving Stan Lee Enterprises, regarding that company’s demise; and litigation brought by Scott Blum, the founder of Buy.com, regarding that company’s IPO. He has also represented Merrill Lynch in a variety of post-trial and appellate matters, and has consulted and acted as shadow counsel in other matters of significance to the company. Other representations include UBS in class action lawsuits challenging their sales of callable CDs and their sales of municipal bonds, respectively, litigation by several hedge funds in connection with a private placement, and a series of class and individual actions in Nevada and California pertaining to the failure of a 1031 exchange entity that had a brokerage relationship with UBS; Wachovia, in connection with litigation stemming from the recent failure of Le-Natures’, Inc., and disputes with institutional and governmental entities in the securities lending arena; the Securities Industry Association, in matters where it has appeared as an amicus; Western Asset Management and Legg Mason, Inc., in a wide range of regulatory, litigation, and business matters; Plainfield Asset Management in a wide range of litigation matters; E*TRADE in a complex series of affirmative and defensive lawsuits in the wake of the largest failure ever of a SIPC-insured institution, Minnesota-based MJK Inc.; and The Coca-Cola Company and its board in shareholder class action and derivative litigation in Georgia alleging improper earnings management and impairment write-offs.