Failure to Protect Assets

Legal Guidance in Los Angeles County for Securities Law Claims

Working hard and dedicating yourself to your career can lead to great financial success. Unfortunately, some brokers fail to protect their clients’ assets, resulting in substantial losses for investors. Securities law attorney Steve A. Buchwalter has assisted residents of Los Angeles County and the surrounding areas for more than two decades. He can help you seek the compensation you deserve if you have been burned by a broker who failed to properly protect your assets.

Assert Your Rights against a Negligent Investment Professional

To recover damages from a negligent broker, an investor generally must prove four elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. Since brokers are responsible for managing the financial welfare of their client’s assets and investments, they owe their clients an elevated duty of care that goes beyond taking the precautions that a reasonably prudent person would use. For brokers, this obligation requires them to use the utmost good faith and care in managing their clients’ assets. Some courts have compared the duty that brokers owe to their clients to the duty that corporate directors owe to their shareholders.

The duty of care requires a broker to monitor an investor’s accounts and to make recommendations to the client about foreseeable financial risks. Brokers must also ensure that each client’s assets are invested in many different types of stocks, bonds, and securities, which is also known as diversification. A broker’s failure to protect a client’s investments can constitute a breach if it fell short of the standard of care in those circumstances. After establishing that the financial advisor breached the duty of care, the investor must prove that the defendant’s negligence caused the investor’s damages. This requires a showing that the investor would not have experienced a financial loss but for the broker’s failure to protect the investor’s assets.

Finally, the investor must provide evidence showing the financial losses that were incurred. For negligence cases involving securities transactions, damages are can be calculated in numerous ways, including the “well managed account” doctrine. This rule measures the difference between the actual value of the unprotected assets and the actual value of the unprotected assets had the broker managed them properly. Typically, this calculation is performed for each instance in which the broker failed to meet his or her duty of care. In some instances, the investor may also be entitled to recover any brokerage fees associated with the services that the financial advisor provided.

Consult a Broker Fraud Attorney in Orange County

We know just how devastating it can be when investment professionals fail to protect their clients’ assets. If you have been burned by a negligent financial advisor, broker fraud lawyer Steve A. Buchwalter can help. He has represented investors from throughout Orange County and other areas of California, ranging from Santa Barbara, Beverly Hills, and Pasadena to Newport Beach and Irvine. We offer a free consultation, so there is no risk to you in learning about what rights you may have when you have suffered preventable financial losses. Call us at (818) 501-8987 or contact us online to set up an appointment.