Mel Weiss, '53


"King of Torts"

MELVYN I. WEISS, Senior and Founding Partner of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP, is a leading practitioner in the fields of securities, insurance, environmental, antitrust, and consumer litigation.

Mr. Weiss's expertise has been recognized on numerous occasions by courts appointing him to leadership positions in prosecuting complex litigations. Among the more prominent of the outstanding recoveries in cases where he has represented defrauded investors or consumers are the Drexel/Milken litigations (recoveries of over $1 billion for investors.);  In re Washington Public Power Supply System Securities Litigation ($775 million recovered after the country's largest municipal bond default),... [and many others].

Mr. Weiss received a B.B.A. in accounting from Baruch College of the City College of New York in 1957, and a J.D. Degree from New York University School of Law in 1959. He was admitted to the Bar of the State of New York in 1960 and is presently a member of the Bar of the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth circuits, and the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Weiss has lectured extensively to lawyers, law students, and other professionals throughout the country and abroad. He has been a guest lecturer at the New York University School of Law, Stanford University Law School, Harvard Law School, Duke Law School, University of Buenos Aires (where he is an honorary professor), and at the Salzburg Seminar Foundation in Austria.  He has addressed the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, National Association of Accountants, National Association of Internal Auditors, and in 1993 delivered the Abraham Briloff Distinguished Lecture at the State University of New York at Binghamton on the role of the auditor in our society.  He has been frequently quoted as a leading authority on shareholder and consumer rights in the national media and he has testified before congressional committees on securities litigation and accountants’ liability.   Mr. Weiss is a Fellow of The American College of Trial Lawyers.  He received the 1993 Arthur T. Vanderbilt Medal from New York University Law School, the highest award given annually to an outstanding alumnus, and is a member of the law school's Board of Trustees and a recipient of the Alumni Achievement Award.  In 2005, Accounting Today named Mr. Weiss as one of its Top 100 Most Influential People.

The complete biography from which the above was excerpted on 12/30/06 is available at the Milberg Weiss website.

JAMAICA HIGH SCHOOL NOTEWORTHY ALUMNI : : : : : : : : 12/30/06