KATHERIN
Reed

• 1. Career
• 2. Education

Reed R. Katherin is a partner in the class action law firm Hagens Berman Sobel & Shapiro LLP.

Career

Since 1988, Mr. Kathrein has focused his practice to representing individual investors and institutions such as public pension funds and Taft Hartley Funds in complex and class action litigation, principally involving securities fraud. Over the past two decades, Mr. Kathrein has litigated over 100 state as well as federal court class actions, nationwide, which have recovered over a billion dollars on behalf of investors.

Recently, his practice has  expanded to cases against the mutual fund industry, including Schwab, Oppenheimer and the Reserve, relating to the false marketing practices of those who sold those funds and the negligent management of those funds. In December of 2008, Mr. Kathrein lead one of the first suits filed against Bernie Madoff, and feeder funds. Today, he is co-lead counsel in several of the Madoff cases coordinated in New York, trying to sort out the liability of the feeder funds, those how sold them, the accountants and the custodial banks.

Early in his career, starting in 1977, Mr. Kathrein represented recording artists and franchisees. From 1979-1988, Mr. Kathrein was a partner in the Chicago law firm Arnstein & Lehr, where he represented national and international corporations in litigation involving antitrust, commercial, toxic tort, employment and product and public liability disputes from 1979-1988.

In 1988 he moved to San Francisco to practice law with David B. Gold and Paul Bennett to whom he expresses great gratitude for teaching him how to litigate against the greedy and powerful. Mr. Gold passed away in 1994. In 1994, Mr. Kathrein opened the San Francisco office of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach. He remained with the Lerach Coughlin which split from Milberg Weiss in 2004, and left in 2007.

Mr. Kathrein publishes and lectures extensively in the fields of litigation, consumer and securities law, class actions, and international law. He has spoken to the American Bar Association (ABA), the American Business Trial Lawyers Association (ABTLA), the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC), the Practicing Law Institute (PLI), the Securities Law Institute, the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), state and local bar groups, private seminar organizations and corporations. He annually co-chaired the Executive Enterprises program for corporate officers and counsel entitled, “Dealing With Analysts and the Press.” He testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on behalf of the American Bar Association in favor of advice and consent to ratification of treaties on international sales, arbitration, evidence and service of process. He testified before the California Assembly and Senate Committees on Y2K litigation, the unfair trade practice act and changes in the business judgment rule. He actively fought the passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) and the Securities Litigation Uniform Standard Act of 1998. He worked behind the scenes to shape the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 on corporate responsibility and accountability. He participates annually as a speaker for the Practicing Law Institutes Securities litigation and Enforcement Institute.

He served as chairman of the Private International Law Committee of the American Bar Association from 1984-1990, as a director and officer of the International Business Counsel Mid-America from 1983-1988, where he also chaired the policy committee. He acted as an advisor to the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law from 1984-1990.

Since moving to California, Mr. Kathrein has served on the Executive Committee of the National Association of Securities and Commercial Law Attorneys (NASCAT), and from 1998-2008 he served on the Board of Governors of the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC). Recently he has served United States District Court for the Northern District of California as the co-chair of the Securities Working Group in California and was tasked by Chief Justices Marilyn Hall Patel and Vaughn Walker to propose and assist in revising the Court's local securities fraud class actions rules. He was appointed by Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker to be a member and then chair the Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in 2006 and 2008. In 2009 he began service as a lawyer representative to the Judicial Conferences of the United States District Court for Northern District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Education

Mr. Kathrein graduated from the University of Miami (B.A. cum laude, 1974; J.D. 1977) where he served as the first student Editor-in-Chief of the International Law Journal. He is admitted to the Bar of the States of Illinois (1977), Florida (1978) and California (1989).