David R. Kaplan

Bio

David Kaplan is a Director at Saxena White and manages the Firm’s California office. Mr. Kaplan has over 25 years of experience in the field of securities and shareholder litigation. He has helped investors achieve hundreds of millions of dollars in recoveries in federal and state courts nationwide, including in securities class actions, direct “opt-out” actions, and shareholder derivative litigation.

Mr. Kaplan is currently leading teams prosecuting complex securities class actions in California, Texas, Virginia, and Pennsylvania federal courts. These cases involve a variety of industries – spanning biopharmaceuticals, online/AI technologies, semiconductor chips, oil & gas E&P, to specialty insurance – and involve billions of dollars in investor losses.

Prior to joining Saxena White, Mr. Kaplan was a partner at another nationally recognized securities litigation firm, where he co-chaired its direct/opt-out action practice, represented lead plaintiffs in securities class actions, and counseled institutional investor clients on potential legal claims as a member of the firm’s new matters department. Before that, Mr. Kaplan was a senior associate at Irell & Manella LLP, where he handled a variety of high-stakes securities and investment-related litigation, commercial business disputes, insurance law, and other complex litigation matters.

In addition to leading multi-disciplinary teams of attorneys, financial analysts, and in-house investigators prosecuting high-stakes securities class actions, a large part of Mr. Kaplan’s day-to-day practice involves advising mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, and other institutional asset managers on whether to remain passive participants in securities class actions or opt out to protect and maximize their securities fraud recoveries. Mr. Kaplan has represented prominent institutional investor opt-out groups in federal courts nationwide.

Mr. Kaplan also has extensive experience advising institutional clients on pursuing securities fraud recoveries in international jurisdictions. His work in this area includes virtually all countries in which shareholder collective actions are authorized by law, including Canada, Australia, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Israel, and Brazil.

Mr. Kaplan is a frequent speaker at national conferences on issues of interest to the institutional investor community, including trends in shareholder litigation, maximizing securities fraud recoveries, ESG and sustainable investing, and efforts to foster Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. He has authored multiple articles relating to class actions and the federal securities laws, which have been published in The National Law Journal, The Daily Journal, Law360, Pensions & Investments, The D&O Diary, and The NAPPA Report, among other publications. Mr. Kaplan is also an editor of the American Bar Association’s Class Actions and Derivative Suits Committee’s newsletter.

Mr. Kaplan was named a “500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyer” by Lawdragon for the sixth consecutive year and has repeatedly been selected as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers.

Mr. Kaplan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Washington and Lee University, and earned his Juris Doctor, High Honors, from Duke University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Duke Law Review.