Harris Pogust on What Not to Do with Half a Billion Dollars

Harris Pogust, who left his high-flying namesake firm nearly a year ago as cracks were beginning to appear in its shiny veneer, is returning to the legal industry but this time in a litigation funding role.

Pogust is joining Bryant Park Capital as a senior adviser, he announced in October. The New Jersey-born lawyer is no stranger to the funding space. The global mass torts firm he launched with UK lawyer Tom Goodhead made headlines in 2023 for a “landmark” investment of more than $500 million from Gramercy Funds Management. With Pogust Goodhead now making very different headlines—for the ouster of Goodhead amid reports of profligate spending—his old firm appears to be a sobering lesson on what not to do with an outsized loan.

Pogust will not comment on what happened there, but he will say he wants to use his hard-won experience to pave a new approach to litigation funding.

“I want it to be more collaborative where the funder helps the firm financially and how to spend its money smartly,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Law. “A lot of times partners get a chunk of money from a funder, the funder’s not paying attention, and the partner goes and buys a Maserati and has fun and then, in the blink of an eye they’re out of funds.”

Harris Pogust

Bryant Park Capital is a Pennsylvania-based investment bank that provides M&A and corporate finance advisory services. It pairs institutional investors with litigation funders. Pogust says it will also expand into funding law firms in Europe and South America. According to its website, the company has completed over 400 assignments representing an aggregate transaction value of more than $30 billion. Pogust is the first person to serve in this specific role at Bryant Park.

When he left Pogust Goodhead at the end of 2024, Pogust planned to retire but changed his mind after discussions with Bryant Park Capital CEO Joel Magerman about consulting. The investment bank, whose office is located in the same building as the US arm of Pogust Goodhead, had assisted the law firm informally on a few prior funding deals.

Pogust still has ties to his old firm and will oversee the resolution of its remaining hernia mesh cases. He said he has a financial obligation to his US funder for those cases, Rocade Capital.

He’s still mapping out what the job will look like but said he wants to help law firms budget the money that is lent to them. When it comes to law firm lending in the mass tort space, there is a large refinance market. Pogust said that he doesn’t want firms to be put in the position where they need to refinance with another funder.

“We don’t want to just lend money to lend money,” he said. “The biggest thing is we just want to help them work as a team, not work as: we lend you a gazillion dollars, now listen to us and whatever we say goes.”

Pogust is not a fan of the recent attempts by legislators to regulate and tax the litigation funding industry. “I think it’s nonsense,” he said. “Why do you pick on this select group of companies?”

Pogust Goodhead’s Bumpy Road

Pogust Goodhead, headquartered in London, was launched in 2018 to focus on group action litigation for environmental issues, consumer protection and human rights.

Litigation funder Gramercy came into the picture in 2023, when it provided the more than half a billion dollars in funding. Much of it went to one of Pogust Goodhead’s largest cases, a group action lawsuit against mining companies over the collapse of a dam near Mariana, Brazil in 2015. Pogust Goodhead represents more than 600,000 claimants and they’ve demanded £36 billion ($47 billion) in damages. The case went to trial last year and a ruling on liability is expected before the end of this year.

Victims of the Mariana dam disaster in Brazil demonstrate outside London’s Royal Courts of Justice on Oct. 21, 2024. (Photo by Peter Nicholls)

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Gramercy is a Greenwich, Connecticut investment management company with $7.74 billion in total assets according to Bloomberg terminal data. Litigation is only a portion of the company’s portfolio, which also consists of emerging market debt strategies and direct lending.

Pogust wouldn’t comment on the situation with Gramercy, but he said the funder stepped up when nobody else would. He said Goodhead traveled to Brazil and came back with 600,000 clients. The trial’s financial outcome is a huge stake of the firm’s portfolio after years of case workup.

‘Too Big Too Fast’

The firm has endured a series of missteps since the funding was put into place. In November of 2024, the firm laid off 20% of its staff. About a week and a half later, Pogust left the firm. In August, Tom Goodhead was also terminated as director and the firm gave Gramercy claim to assets on $617 million worth of funding.

Despite one of the firm’s major victories being a 2022 settlement from Volkswagen Group for L193 million over the carmaker’s diesel defeat devices, the firm in recent related diesel litigation asked a UK court to step down from its lead position. Just last week the firm sent a letter to clients pursuing car financing fraud claims saying it would no longer be representing them. The firm did not reply to a request for comment on dropping those clients.

Companies House filings show Huw Dolphin, a former DLA Piper restructuring partner and now turnaround consultant, now has majority control of the firm, which is carrying a debt load in the hundreds of millions.

The UK Times reported last week that an internal investigation carried out by DLA Piper claimed there was “excessive and uncontrolled spending directed and led by Goodhead.” Goodhead denied the claims.

“We grew too big too fast,” Pogust said. “You gotta walk before you run, but some people like to come out of the gate sprinting and hoping that everybody else just fades.”

Goodhead did not respond to a request for comment.

Gramercy declined to comment.