Marc Stanley, a prominent Dallas securities trial lawyer who has handled thousands of cases and taken more than 50 disputes to trial, was sworn in Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Karen Gren Scholer as the new ambassador to the Argentine Republic.
The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Stanley on Saturday about 12:30 a.m. CST.
Covid-19 permitting, Stanley plans to officially move to Buenos Aires Jan. 12. He is the third Texas lawyer to hold the position in recent years. He replaces Judge Edward Prado of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
“I love Argentina,” Stanley told The Texas Lawbook Wednesday. “It is a beautiful country with great resources and great people. It is a country that has nowhere to go but up.”
Stanley said Argentina is facing about $45 billion in debt to the International Monetary Fund and significant issues with inflation. In addition, the Covid pandemic has hit the country hard.
The State Department has scheduled about 20 briefings for Stanley over the next couple of weeks.
“It takes a while to onboard with the State Department,” he said.
Stanley received his law degree from the University of Texas in 1982. He started as a lawyer at Strasburger & Price, where Scholer was also a rookie attorney.
“After I swore him in, we discussed how neither of us could have possibly imagined this event back when we were fresh out of law school working as big law first year associates. Beyond our wildest dreams to be serving our country as we now are,” Judge Scholer said on Wednesday. “Having known Marc for nearly 40 years, I have every confidence that he will represent our country very well in Argentina. Particularly with Wendy by his side.”
In 1986, Stanley and a half-dozen others started their own law firms. Four years later, he started his own law firm that focused on securities litigation.
One of Stanley’s biggest wins came in the 2015 case Haddock v. Nationwide Financial Services. The lawsuit against Nationwide was filed in the summer of 2001 and resulted in seven published opinions, including a landmark decision that insurance companies can be held as fiduciaries under ERISA. The case, which was litigated in Connecticut, settled for $140 million in cash and another $60 million in future benefits.
In 2016, Stanley represented churchgoers who contributed an estimated $450 million to a group called Gospel for Asia. He sued because the Gospel for Asia leaders promised donors that their money would go to the full purchase of “new bikes, blankets, water buffalos and other necessities” for those in need as a way to “spread the news of Jesus Christ through Asia.”
Instead, the money ended up in private bank accounts of others. Part of the case settled in 2019 for $37 million, and the rest of it is still being litigated in Canada.