Background

I graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Brigham Young University in 1977 and a law degree from University of Chicago Law School in 1980.

I began practicing law in 1980 at Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis, where I became a shareholder. My cases included an arbitration against a major securities firm for unauthorized naked call option writing, in which I learned to use what was then a novel tool—a computer spreadsheet on an Apple computer—to recalculate complex daily calculations of the client's "buying power" in his margin account over about three years. The client received an award in excess of a million dollars.

I also represented the outside directors of Flight Transportation Corporation in class action litigations that were consolidated in the District of Minnesota in the mid-1980s. This was a high-flying public company that had been propelled through three years of supposed fantastic growth and four public offerings by a non-existing charter flight business to the Cayman Islands. The outside directors were victims of this fraud, but were also named as defendants.

I was a co-author of the brief submitted to the United States Supreme Court in a securities fraud lawsuit, on the issue of whether recoveries must be reduced by tax benefits received. The Supreme Court reversed the decision below, ruling for my firm’s clients. Randall v. Loftsgaarden, 478 U.S. 647, 106 S. Ct. 3143 (1986).

I was the lead litigation attorney representing about eighty investors in three limited partnerships that bought Florida condominiums. Settlements with attorneys, accountants, a savings & loan and others totaled about $2,500,000.

The market crash in 1987 brought a flood of arbitrations between securities brokers and customers in which I represented brokers. The early 1990s brought an NASD campaign against the Minneapolis “white sheet” over-the-counter market makers, alleging they charged excessive markups. The NASD filed disciplinary actions against almost every regional broker/dealer in town who dealt actively in the white sheet stocks. I defended a number of local broker/dealers in these proceedings.

In 1994, I became the general counsel for John G. Kinnard and Company, Incorporated, a securities broker/dealer with headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During this period he guided the company through the defense of three class action lawsuits, getting one dismissed and successfully settling the other two. I also revised the firm’s supervisory procedures, worked extensively on various regulatory matters, and supervised or personally handled various other arbitrations or lawsuits during this time. Shortly before I left, I did the initial investigation, legal research and preparation of an arbitration statement of claim involving a wrongful competition by a competing firm. This arbitration ultimately resulted in an award of over $16 million in favor of Kinnard.

In 1998, I started my own law firm, Meikle Professional Association. During this time I represented plaintiffs and defendants in various lawsuits and arbitrations, including a trial defending a securities broker against claims brought by 28 plaintiffs, a trial to break up a deadlock in a corporation equally owned by two shareholders, a court-ordered arbitration involving the breakup of an accounting firm, and the defense and settlement of a class action lawsuit against a securities broker.

From August 2002 through September 2005, another attorney joined me and the firm name was changed to Meikle & Taylor, P.A. Among various other matters, we defended and settled a class action lawsuit against a securities brokerage firm. Later, with that firm’s consent, we organized 34 plaintiffs who were creditors or former shareholders of that securities firm and filed a lawsuit on their behalf against a large foreign bank. These were persons who had been injured by a massive and complex alleged fraud by a former employee of that bank. This alleged fraud involved market manipulation of a California company’s stock and fraudulent manipulation of intra-broker stock loans, which victimized of the local stock brokerage firm and led to its demise. Many lawsuits had been filed in federal district and bankruptcy courts involving this alleged fraud, but those lawsuits would not provide relief to the investors who became our clients. They had “fallen through the cracks” because no other attorneys had figured out how to establish an independent claim for those clients.

We researched and found a niche in which we thought our clients’ claims could be successfully pursued. We asserted state court claims in a way that allowed us to keep in state court, rather than to be moved to federal court. We defeated the bank’s motion to dismiss the claims. We brought a summary judgment motion against the Bank, defended against its summary judgment motion, obtained a trial date in state court that was months earlier than the trial date in federal court cases, distilled the important facts from hundreds of thousands of documents, thousands of phone recordings, and dozens of depositions taken in the federal cases, and prepared for the trial. We then negotiated a confidential settlement shortly before the court decided the summary judgment motions and shortly before our trial was scheduled to begin.

I have also testified and served as an expert witness. I have done so in matters relating to “raiding” claims between securities brokers involving non-compete and hiring issues, relating to confidentiality obligations of investment bankers to their clients, relating to the minimum net capital requirements imposed on securities broker/dealers, and relating to analysis of investor accounts on behalf of a customer asserting claims against a securities broker.

I have been admitted to the bars of the Minnesota State Supreme Court (1980), United States District Court for the District of Minnesota (1980) and the United States Supreme Court (1986), the U.S. Court of Appeals, 8th Circuit (1987) and the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit (1988).