The latest Madoff-related class action to be filed is against Fairfield Greenwich Group. The case was filed today in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, and alleges breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and unjust enrichment by Fairfield Greenwich Group and several of its principals. The plaintiffs in the case are Pasha S. Anwar and Julia Anwar, who had invested in Sentry, Fairfield’s largest fund.
Individual defendants include Walter M. Noel Jr., Jeffrey Tucker and Andres Piedrahita, Fairfield’s three co-founders, as well as two executives at the firm who helped manage Sentry. Among other things, the complaint asserts that “defendants failed to perform even a minimum level of due diligence regarding the activities of Madoff.”
Plaintiffs’ cousel for the case is New York-based Lovell, Stewart and Halebian. Christopher Lovell told Bloomberg that “investors trust these hedge fund people to do the analysis and use due care to analyze what’s going on. That’s not what happened here.” He added that his firm filed the case in state court rather than federal because in state court, “the proceeding cannot be put on hold.”
A copy of the complaint is available below, via Dealbook.
[…] accurate prediction, as restitution for unjust enrichment has begun to feature quite prominently in some of the law suits arising out of the Madoff mess (including a very interesting case by NYU); in […]