The ‘king of torts,’ a class-action pioneer
Melvyn Weiss waged war against Wall Street over four decades, targeting fraud and corruption
Melvyn Weiss was a lawyer who pioneered the use of class-action lawsuits to target corporate malfeasance, winning billions of dollars for investors and negotiating a landmark settlement for survivors of the Holocaust.
The grizzled, lightly bearded son of a New York accountant, Weiss was sometimes labeled “the king of torts,” a reference to a best-selling legal novel by John Grisham and the branch of law that made Weiss incredibly wealthy. Earning more than $10 million (U.S.) each year, he flew to meetings in a private jet, threw lavish hula-themed parties for his employees and outfitted his Long Island mansion with a prodigious gambling room and dozens of works by Picasso.
Weiss would later squander his reputation in a kickback scandal that landed him in prison.
He died Feb. 2 at his home in Boca Raton, Fla., at age 82. The cause was complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, said his son Stephen Weiss, founding partner of the law firm Seeger Weiss.
Weiss was a major donor to Democratic candidates and causes and was a longtime supporter of the Israel Policy Forum, a Manhattan-based organization that advocates for a two-state solution in the Middle East. With his wife, he also established a foundation to pay for the loans of New York University Law School students committed to working in the public interest.
To many legal scholars, however, he was known less for the fortune he amassed than for the fierce, four-decade battle he waged against Wall Street fraud and corruption.
As founder of New York-based Milberg Weiss, he oversaw what became the world’s largest class-action law firm, leading a team of more than 200 lawyers, accountants and former FBI investigators who went after investment banks and titans of industry with a wolverine ferocity.
Working pro bono, Weiss also represented Holocaust survivors and their families in several cases, including a 1998 negotiation with Swiss banks that resulted in $1.25 billion compensation for assets that had been hoarded in the aftermath of the Second World War.
While Weiss was championed by clients who saw him as a safeguard against boardroom greed and incompetence, he simultaneously was derided by businesses who viewed him as little more than a leech and opportunist, persuading shareholders to finance legal battles that were effectively paid for out of their own pockets.
By Weiss’ estimation, his firm netted investors more than $20 billion since it was founded in 1965.
Federal investigators found that part of its success came about because of millions of dollars in kickbacks, which the firm used to secure plaintiffs in about 180 cases over 25 years. Lerach received a two-year sentence for his role in the scheme, and the firm itself — once formally known as Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman — agreed to pay $75 million in a settlement.
More than 250 letters of support were sent to the court on behalf of Weiss, who was disbarred and spent 12 months in prison, four more in a halfway house and paid $10 million in fines and forfeitures. Retiring to Boca Raton, he worked as a mediator and fished for snapper and bonito.