Elizabeth V Tanis (Beth)

Her recent trial and arbitration experience includes:

• Lead counsel in one of the two largest business cases tried to verdict in Georgia.  After a four week trial of this $400 million case involving Georgia RICO and fraud allegations against a Big Four accounting firm and two of its partners, the jury found against the plaintiffs, who were investors in a public company that went bankrupt.  On a negligent misrepresentation claim, the jury found no liability against the two partners and awarded the accounting firm with an amount consisting of less than five percent of the requested damages and less than ten percent of the plaintiffs’ lowest settlement demand. 
  
  
• Lead counsel in a $35 million case in South Florida against a Big Four accounting firm that had audited the financial statements of a public company that later went bankrupt.  After a ten week jury trial, the accounting firm prevailed on the claims brought by the liquidating trustee.  The three creditor bank plaintiffs received a judgment for only a small fraction of the damages sought and the lowest settlement offer received. 
  
  
• Lead counsel in a $13 million case brought against a Big Four accounting firm by a plaintiff claiming to have merged with the accounting firm’s client in reliance on an audit opinion that the accounting firm later withdrew.  After a nine-day arbitration, the panel ruled in favor of the accounting firm, declining to find negligence and concluding that the plaintiff failed to prove any damages resulting from the alleged negligence. 
  
  
• Second chair in a four-month bench trial in a securities fraud and professional negligence case brought against a Big Four accounting firm by 162 individual investors in tax shelters.  The trial court issued a 151-page order finding in favor of the accounting firm on all counts.

Other recent representative matters include:

• Defense of Big Four accounting firm in connection with one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history, which has spun off a securities class action, a law suit filed by a bankruptcy trustee, and regulatory investigations.
  
  
• Defense of accounting firms and companies in securities fraud class actions;
  
  
• Defense of professional services firms in adversary proceedings and other lawsuits brought by bankruptcy trustees, liquidating trustees, insurance commissioners and receivers; 
  
  
• Defense of a national law firm in a case brought by an SEC receiver;
  
  
• Defense of clients sued by disappointed parties to merger and acquisition agreements; and
  
  
• Defense of clients in SEC investigations, PCAOB enforcement proceedings and other regulatory proceedings, and criminal investigations.