Milberg Weiss

Milberg LLP (formerly known as Milberg Weiss LLP and Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP) is a US plaintiffs' law firm, established in 1965 and based in New York City. It has mounted many class action cases on behalf of investors, and has been recognized as among the leading firms in its field by the National Law Journal, RiskMetrics Group, and Law360. The firm and some of its partners were charged in 2006 with offering improper inducements to plaintiffs. The case against the firm itself was dismissed in 2008, but that same year four partners pleaded guilty to charges, and many others had already left the firm.

Melvyn Weiss convinced his partner, Lawrence Milberg, to fund class-action securities litigation against Dolly Madison Industries. Dolly Madison acquired at least 30 companies over an 18-month period. Dolly Madison was allegedly facilitating these deals by falsifying its balance sheet to artificially increase its stock price. Weiss and Milberg thought they could win a large payout from Dolly Madison's accounting firm, Touche Ross and Co., a "big eight" firm in the 1960s. Like most defendants in class actions, Dolly Madison delayed as long as possible and the case did not go to trial until 1973. Shortly before a verdict was rendered Touche settled for $2 million, resulting in a $500,000 fee for Milberg.

Before its split in May 2004 with the firm now known as Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, it was the largest plaintiff law firm in the United States, with over 200 attorneys, responsible, at least in part, for over 50 percent of all securities class action cases settled in 2002.

Milberg was co-lead counsel in a securities fraud class action case against French conglomerate Vivendi. After nearly eight years of litigation, the case was tried to a jury for three months in late 2009, and resulted in a verdict for plaintiffs in January 2010. The jury found Vivendi liable for 57 false or misleading class period statements. Even with claimants who made foreign purchases removed from the class after the Supreme Court’s Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd decision, total damages claims exceeded $1 billion.

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