Stock Market Loss Attorneys

Hermann, Cahn & Schneider

1301 E. 9th Street Suite 500 Cleveland, Ohio 44114 USA

 (216) 781-5515 or (877) 215-0593

www.stockmarketloss.com
 Contact Hugh Berkson

Law Firm Overview Free Consultation

Hermann, Cahn & Schneider, located in Cleveland, OH, is a multi-dimensional 15-attorney litigation firm. The trial lawyers at our firm provide aggressive advocacy and creative problem solving in securities disputes, medical malpractice and personal injury cases, divorce and family law matters, and a wide array of lawsuits involving business, insurance, and governmental subdivision liability.

The Stockmarketloss group, a litigation team within the HC&S law firm, consists of investment misconduct lawyers Anthony J. Hartman, Jay H. Salamon, and Hugh D. Berkson. We spend nearly all of our professional time litigating investment disputes, exclusively representing investors injured by stockbrokers, investment advisors, insurance agents, and other investment professionals.

The three of us combined have spent more than 80 years fighting on both sides of the securities litigation wars. For decades, we represented major securities broker-dealers, defending them against customer claims of fraud and negligence. But we eventually became tired of defending activities we felt were unconscionable. Every day, we saw elderly and vulnerable retirees, blue-collar and middle-class investors, professionals, and business executives losing their hard-earned money at the hands of incompetent, reckless, or dishonest stockbrokers, advisors, financial planners, and insurance agents.

As a consequence, we decided to redirect our efforts and to focus solely on helping investors who have been victimized by corrupt or careless brokerage firms, insurance companies, and investment advisory firms, as well as individual brokers and agents.

Our many years spent defending brokerage firms have provided us with valuable insight into the strategies employed by stock brokers and their lawyers. We know how they think and what tactics they’ll use. Because of our experience, you can feel confident in our ability to anticipate and prepare for whatever may happen in your case.

Year this Office was Established: 1979

Languages: English

Practice Areas

Additional Practice Areas: Broker Misconduct, Investment Advisor Misconduct, Variable Annuities Sales Misconduct, Variable Life Insurance Sales Misconduct, Misrepresentation or Omission of Facts, Misleading Illustrations, Unsuitable Investments, Margin Trading, Failure to Recommend Protective Hedge Strategies, Failure to Properly Choose or Monitor Outside Money Managers, Structured Products,
Hedge Funds, Equity Indexed Annuities, Options, Employee Stock Options and Warrants, Variable Insurance Policies, Variable Annuities.

Practice Areas Description

- Broker Misconduct

There are many ways a stockbroker can violate legal and ethical obligations to a customer, and in most cases, the broker’s employer — often a large brokerage firm — will be obligated to pay the damages. Tony Hartman, Jay Salamon, and Hugh Berkson are lawyers who exclusively represent clients hurt by the misconduct of investment professionals such as stockbrokers.

- Equity Indexed Annuities

Indexed annuities sometimes referred to as fixed indexed annuities and formerly called equity indexed annuities, are poorly regulated financial instruments sold by insurance agents. Investors often are led to believe that that they can’t lose their principal investment in indexed annuities and that the annuities are very safe. This isn’t true. In fact, almost all people holding indexed annuities will lose money.

- Hedge Fund Abuses

Hedge funds are private investment pools for financially sophisticated investors with a lot of money and a high tolerance for risk. Because they’re private funds, they aren’t registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and they don’t have to disclose basic information about their investments. But today, we also have investment companies that invest in hedge funds rather than in individual securities. These “funds of hedge funds” allow individual investors with less capital to participate in hedge funds. Some, but not all, of these funds of funds are SEC registered, but they embody nearly all the risk of the private hedge funds from which they are composed.

- Investment Advisor Misconduct

While the differences between a stock broker and an investment advisor are technical and extensive under the law, (the two types of professionals exist under completely separate regulatory systems), an investment advisor is a financial professional who gives investment advice for a fee, sometimes charged on an hourly basis, but usually charged on an annual percentage of assets under management. In contrast, stockbrokers generally charge commissions on a per-trade basis, although that changed for a while as brokerage firms tried to blur the distinctions between brokers and investment advisors.

- Margin Trading

Margin trading is one of the primary sources of profit for brokerage houses. For the average individual investor, there are few faster ways to lose nearly all of your assets than through large-scale participation in margin trading. Hermann, Cahn & Schneider in Cleveland, Ohio works to help victims of stockbroker misconduct get their money back.

- Misrepresentation/Omission of Facts

Have you suffered a significant investment loss because your stockbroker or investment advisor misrepresented an investment or failed to give you the facts you needed to make an informed investment decision? Some brokers who misrepresent or omit facts are just careless. Others may not necessarily lie, but they might withhold certain facts that could cause you not to invest. And sadly, some brokers will intentionally deceive you.

- Misleading Illustration

When a broker, insurance agent, or financial planner makes a recommendation with a long time horizon in mind – for example, a recommendation to purchase a variable universal life insurance policy or to choose a particular asset allocation for a retirement portfolio – you likely will be presented with a hypothetical illustration of future performance. But this illustration could be highly misleading and even fraudulent if it does not clearly explain the basis of the assumptions and the possible future downside risks.

- Opt Outs from Class Action Litigation

When securities firms or other financial institutions engage in misconduct on a large scale, the victims may number in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands. The result may be that someone brings a class action lawsuit. But if you’ve suffered a significant financial loss, you should be wary of participating in a class action. You’ll almost always be far better off if you “opt out” of the class and pursue your own individual case.

- Outside Money Managers

When you invest with a large investment firm that has a respected name, you not only expect them to handle your money wisely, but also to handle it themselves. All of their advertising and marketing materials persuade you to believe that they’re the experts, they’ll take care of you, and they’ll treat your hard earned money as carefully as they would their own.

- Structured Products

The term “structured product” doesn’t have any widely accepted definition in the investment industry. Structured products are the securities equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster. Their creation begins with a traditional security, such as a bond, but instead of payments derived from the issuer’s own cash flow and eventual return of principal to the investor, the issuer substitutes payments derived from the performance of one or more underlying assets. Structured products pay off only if the underlying assets perform at sufficient levels. In other words, if the underlying assets return “x,” the investor will receive “y.”

- Unsuitable Investments

Investing would be easy if a single strategy was right for everyone. Yet investors vary from one another in terms of their financial circumstances, goals, needs, and tolerance of risk. Investments that are appropriate for an unmarried 25-year-old may not be suitable for a 50-year-old with kids in college or for a retiree who depends on investment income.

- Variable Annuities Sales Misconduct

As you can tell from the title, we don’t much like variable annuities. And we’re not alone. For example, noted financial writer Jane Bryant Quinn once wrote that variable annuities make her so angry that she dreams of blowing them to smithereens. She quoted John Biggs, former chair of TIAA-CREF pension funds, as declaring, “I cannot imagine a personal financial situation where I’d recommend a VA as a good idea.” Mr. Biggs suggested that insurance executives eventually will be marched, handcuffed, through courts for the way they sell variable annuities today.

- Variable Universal Life Sales Misconduct

You might wonder why lawyers who represent investors in disputes against stockbrokers would be writing about life insurance. Most people are unaware that certain life insurance products are actually securities and can only be sold by agents who hold a special type of broker’s license. In fact, we are seeing more and more cases of bad brokers turning to insurance products as a way to boost their sagging income. People often don’t realize that an insurance agent can be sued for sales abuses. But in fact, such agents are held to many of the standards applicable to conventional stockbrokers.

Attorneys

	Mr. Hugh Berkson Attorney Banking and Finance, Banking Law, Finance, Financial Services Law, Securities		Mr. Anthony Hartman Attorney Banking and Finance, Business and Industry, Ethics
	Mr. Jay H. Salamon Attorney Banking and Finance, Banking Law, Business and Industry, Finance, Financial Services Law

More Information on Hermann, Cahn & Schneider

Broker Misconduct Attorneys in Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio Equity Indexed Annuities Law Firm
Hedge Fund Abuse Lawyers in Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio Outside Money Managers Attorneys
Opt Outs from Class Action Litigation Law Firm in Cleveland, OH
Cleveland, OH Structured Products Lawyers
Investment Advisor Misconduct Attorneys in Cleveland, OH
Cleveland, OH Margin Trading Law Firm
Hermann, Cahn & Schneider News and Publications
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