Colin M Downes

Colin M. Downes is a partner of Barton & Downes LLP with experience litigating a wide range of employee benefits cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts across the country. This experience includes complex class action cases brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) involving employee stock ownership plans, allegations of breaches of fiduciary duty and prohibited transactions, excessive 401k and 403b fees, improper compensation for plan fiduciaries, pension plan underfunding, and the ERISA obligations of religiously affiliated nonprofits. He has also litigated both individual and class claims brought under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) on behalf of military reservists and veterans.

Prior to co-founding Barton & Downes LLP, Colin was an associate with the class action litigation boutique Block & Leviton LLP. He also previously practiced with the defense-side employee benefits boutique Groom Law Group, Chartered and the international law firm Clifford Chance LLP. At Groom, Colin’s practice centered on representing employee benefit plan fiduciaries in ERISA actions brought by plan participants or by the United States Department of Labor. And at Clifford Chance, where Colin began his law practice, he represented business clients in large, cross-border transactions including secured lending facilities, asset-backed securitizations (including of aircraft leases, residential mortgages, and viatical settlements), corporate reorganizations, mergers, and acquisitions, as well as in policyholder-side insurance coverage matters, maritime foreclosure/asset recovery actions, and syndicated lender representations in bankruptcy proceedings. Colin’s exposure both to defense-side ERISA representations and to a variety of sophisticated corporate advisory engagements has provided Colin with broad commercial perspective and experience that has proven invaluable in his representation of plaintiffs in complex employee benefits litigation.

Colin attended law school at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as an editor of the Virginia Law Review and an executive editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law. While at UVA, he participated in the Phillips C. Jessup International Moot Court, twice qualifying to the international rounds. And he received both the Robert E. Goldsten Award for his contributions to classroom discussion and recitation and the Bracewell & Giulani Award for outstanding oral advocacy.

In addition to his professional activities, Colin coaches high school debate at Sidwell Friends School and is active in the parish life of the Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes in Washington, D.C.