Scott O'Connell
Partner
Deputy Chair, Litigation Department
Practice Group Leader, Class Actions & Aggregate Litigation

Practice Areas

Experience

Alternate office contact
Manchester, NH
603-628-4087

Scott O’Connell represents integrated financial service companies—including banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and regulated subsidiaries of nonfinancial parents—in federal and state court litigation and before regulatory agencies.

Mr. O’Connell has extensive experience defending financial institutions in class actions concerning lender liability, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of good faith, unfair and deceptive trade practices, fraud, misrepresentation, fair debt collection practices, and civil RICO. He has particular trial experience litigating complex financial relationships between parties. His trial experience includes disputes between majority/minority shareholders in closely held businesses, partners, joint venturers, and co-developers. He has also successfully defended companies and their professional advisors sued under various theories of securities fraud.

While at law school, Mr. O’Connell served as an editor of the Cornell Law Review and as chancellor of the Moot Court Board. He was also an instructor in the Cornell undergraduate government course, “Law: Its Nature and Function.”

Mr. O’Connell is Vice Chair of the Nixon Peabody Litigation Department. He has been recognized for exceptional standing in the legal community in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business 2010 for litigation work. He has been recognized by Chambers USA in previous years. He has also been recognized as a “New England Super Lawyer” in Securities Litigation based on a peer-review survey by Boston Magazine (2008, 2007) and inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2011 in Commercial Litigation (Copyright 2010 by Woodward/White, Inc. of Aiken, S.C.). Mr. O’Connell has earned an AV peer rating from Martindale-Hubbell.

Selected Recent Experience

• Dismissal of putative national class actions in California and Utah concerning forced place insurance for leased equipment. Dismissal in Utah affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
• Successfully represented a cosmetics manufacturer at trial and through appeal in a consumer protection case in defending its anti-gray and anti-diversion campaigns, which protects the company’s brand name and intellectual property rights. After 4 years of extensive trial and appellate court litigation the case was tried in August of 2007. In the week long bench trial the judge ruled that the company’s anti-gray and anti-diversion campaigns did not violate any consumer protection laws and found in favor of our client. Appeal Court affirmed;
• Successful defense and settlement of two loan officer Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions against National Bank;
• Successful defense in a confidential arbitration involving a closely-held business dispute;
• National coordinating counsel for truth-in-lending, fiduciary and consumer protection actions and related claims pending throughout the country against a national bank;
• Successful opposition to class certification in various consumer class actions and an employment collective action;
• Successful defense of $81 million fraud and negligent representation action in Vermont for alleged “bad-bond opinions” in connection with Seabrook nuclear power plant;
• Successful defense of a “Big 5” accounting firm in connection with the failure of a New Hampshire bank and its holding company;
• Successful defense of $10 million lender liability action brought against a Boston-based bank;
• Successful defense of a national bank against a $15 million lender liability action involving fraud, misrepresentation, and civil RICO;
• Internal investigation and resulting civil RICO action against certain inside officers and directors in three related national banks;
• Successful arbitration in New York of $4 million civil fraud and conspiracy case concerning alleged false postal documents and no-prosecution decision in related criminal investigation;
• Successful defense of a “bet the company” closely held corporate control/shareholder dispute and receivership action in the Delaware Chancery Court;
• $1 million judgment after trial in cellular partnership dispute and successful dismissal of $6 million counterclaims;
• Multimillion-dollar recovery from joint venturer in breach of fiduciary duty and breach of loyalty action;
• Multiple internal investigations of insider financial impropriety

Publications

• “Effective Collaboration: Twenty Practical Considerations for Corporate Counsel to Obtain Value While Containing Costs,” The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, June 2005 (coauthor)
• “Am I Doing Business With a Terrorist: Practical Considerations in Complying with the USA Patriot Act of 2001”
• “When a Civil Action Becomes Criminal: Practical Considerations in Concurrent Proceedings,” December 2, 2003 (coauthor)
• “Imposing Corporate Governance Reform: The SEC Takes Action,” New Hampshire Business Review, December 12-25, 2003
• “Litigation extranets: how not to crash and burn,” New Hampshire Business Review, August 22, 2003
• “Preventing a Corporate Death Sentence: Governance after Sarbanes-Oxley,” July 29, 2003 (coauthor)
• “Extranet Best Practices: A National Litigation Team Learned How to Make Its Extranet Live UP to Its Full Potential,” Legal Times, June 16, 2003 (coauthor)
• “Document Retention Policies Revisited,” Nixon Peabody LLP Corporate Responsibility Alert, May 27, 2003 (coauthor)
• “Going Supersonic with Litigation Extranets: How Not to Crash and Burn,” April 21, 2003
• “Are You Doing Business with a Terrorist?” New Hampshire Business Review, May 31, 2002
• “New Hampshire Supreme Court Recognizes the Tort of Loss of Opportunity or Lost Chance to Recover Damages in Medical Negligence Actions,” April 7, 2001
• “New Hampshire Supreme Court Ruling That Insurance Companies Are Not Subject to Claims Under the Consumer Protection Act RSA 358-A,” April 7, 2001

Admissions

Mr. O’Connell is admitted to practice in all federal and state courts in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New York and the District of Columbia, and before the U.S. courts of appeals for the First, Second, and Tenth circuits.

Education

Cornell Law School, J.D. (Editor, Law Review)
St. Lawrence University, B.A., cum laude

Affiliations

Mr. O’Connell is currently a member of the Federal Court Advisory Committee for the District of New Hampshire. In January 2003, he was selected by New Hampshire state-wide paper, The Union Leader—as one of the state’s “Forty under 40.” Mr. O’Connell is a former vice chairman of the Farnum Center, a statewide alcohol and drug in-patient recovery program; former member of the Board of Directors of the New Hampshire Food Bank (a program of Catholic Charities); past president of the New Hampshire Task Force to Prevent Child Abuse; former captain, Heritage United Way Community Investment Process; founding director of the St. Lawrence University Alumni Lawyers Association; and New Hampshire coordinator of the Cornell Law School Alumni Association. Mr. O’Connell is a graduate of Leadership New Hampshire.

Pro Bono

As part of a commitment to give back to the community, Mr. O'Connell has dedicated substantial time to pro bono matters, including assisting in the release of a client, who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay. For his work on this matter, Mr. O'Connell received the Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award from the Law Office of the Southern Center for Human Rights. He has also received a certificate in 2005 by the firm for exemplary pro bono service.