Adv. Michael Bach

What recent key move did you lead?
Together with my partner, Adv. Ron Lederman, and due to the joint efforts of the firm’s team, we have been managing dozens of successful class actions where we achieved numerous achievements for the public benefit. Some of the significant class actions that we are currently managing include.
1. The legal struggle which currently takes place at the Supreme Court, in the name of Israel’s elderly population, against the three credit card companies which are active in Israel, in order to force them to compensate the elderly people due to damages they suffered due to the fraud conducted by telemarketing companies in the framework of the “Elderly Sting” affair, which was not prevented by the credit card companies.
2. The current legal struggle in the Supreme Court against the industrial companies Rotem Amfert and Periclase of the ICL Group, with regard to the pollution they caused to the Ein Bokek nature reserve and the Havurat Yehudah Aquifer.
3. Winning a motion for the certification of a class action against Volkswagen AG and Champion Motors concerning the “Diesel-Gate” fraud scandal to compensate the entire population of Israel for the air pollution and to compensate the car owners for the damages which were inflicted to their vehicles due to the installation of the fraudulent software.
4. Managing a class action against the IEC on behalf of all of the population of Israel in the sum of billions of NIS, which the IEC is asked to return to all of its clients, due to payments that were collected from the public in order to fund illegal salary anomalies and erroneous pension provisions for the company’s employees and pensioners. The class action was certified by the District Court and the Supreme Court, and now the class action is heard to its merits.
5. Winning a class action against all of the leading Israeli insurance companies for all types of policies they market, regarding their policy not to add interest to the insurance compensations from the date set in clause 28 of the Insurance Contract Law, as part of their practice of holding payments to the insured in order to exhaust them and cause them to let go or compromise. The court already approved also the class action to its merits itself, and currently a court-appointed expert is working to determine the sums that would be paid to the public.

What are the firm’s strongest attributes?
Ron and I gained a lot of experience during the years. Both of us grew up in large law firms, with a commercial orientation, and have had experience in a wide variety of practice areas, in litigation, in insolvency, in counseling companies and organizations and in legal support in a wide variety of transactions (commercial, hi-tech and real estate). Over the years, we were drawn to commercial litigation. Our firm is a “boutique firm” with experience and expertise in complex litigation.
In the class action field - we work from a sense of mission and only take cases where we believe that real injustice and harm was done to the public and we identify with the cause. The knowledge that we work for something that we believe in gives us strength and motivates us to invest extensive efforts. Beyond the sense of mission, there is also a huge professional challenge. These are lawsuits that involve complex and sometimes groundbreaking legal issues that require out-of-the-box thinking, they involve very large sums of money that may reach in some cases to hundreds of million NIS or even billions. The class actions that we file concern a broad and fascinating variety of fields – insurance, consumerism, securities, environmental protection, protection of animal rights, antitrust, banking, lawsuits against the state authorities, labor law and more.
Naturally, the defendants hire excellent lawyers who have a specific specialization in the complaint’s field, and they fight hard for any sub-proceeding in order to dismiss the class action. All of the above creates a fascinating battle of minds and a particular satisfaction when a class action wins.
You can add to this the deep friendship between Ron and myself and the good atmosphere in the firm, which is like a small family for everyone, and turns our work days to fun. We often look at the clock and realize that we didn’t feel how the day flew by.  

What should one remember during hardships?
Put things in perspective. Difficult times are not always up to us. Often, such times are an opportunity for growth and strengthening. With persistence in uncompromising professional work, faith and determination, better times would definitely return. We see these proceedings as “long-distance running”. It is not by chance that we hung in our office a painting with Constantine Cavafy’s poem “The Road to Ithaca”, that serves as our motto.