Profile Title: Partner Location: New York Telephone: 212.946.9450 Fax: 212.273.4395 Admitted: New York, 1978 California, 1978 Education: B.A., Yale University, 1973 magna cum laude J.D., Harvard University, 1976 cum laude Practice Areas Consumer Litigation Securities Litigation Accountants' Liability Litigation Annuities Litigation Mr. Spencer focuses his practice primarily on class actions on behalf of defrauded investors and consumers, as well as complex commercial litigation. Mr. Spencer began his legal career as a law clerk to Hon. Wm. Matthew Byrne Jr., United States District Court, Central District of California, in 1976-77. He then returned to New York and joined Cravath, Swaine & Moore as an associate, where he worked until 1986 on antitrust, banking, real estate, commercial and securities litigation matters. In his later years at Cravath, he represented the bond fund trustee in connection with bond defaults of Washington Public Power Supply System nuclear plants.In 1986, he joined Milberg Weiss as an associate and became a partner later that year. He worked on the WPPSS securities fraud litigation and many of the firm’s other cases, prominently including representation of the FDIC in its failed bank audit litigation involving the Butcher Brothers banks in Tennessee, which led to a year-long trial and a global settlement of all bank-related claims against Ernst & Whinney just before closing arguments to the jury in late 1992. He has since worked on many of the firm’s securities fraud cases, and cases in other areas, including representation of a broad coalition of union health care funds seeking to recover costs for treating smoking-related illnesses from the tobacco industry; Year 2000 litigation; cases involving alleged kickbacks in the mortgage insurance industry; and consumer and securities fraud cases against insurance companies selling deferred annuities into qualified retirement plans. |