About Us > Our Legal Team

ROBERT H.WEISS: FOUNDER

Robert H. Weiss, the founder of Weiss and Associates, LLC, has dedicated his entire legal career to protecting and fighting for the rights of everyday Americans. He began practicing law close to 25 years ago and, shortly after he was admitted to practice, began his own firm. Over the years he has received national recognition for his successful litigations against major corporations and for his intensive involvement in consumer-related national lawsuits. His successes and honorable endeavors have generated frequent invitations to appear on a number of national news networks regarding a variety of topical complex litigations issues. Over the recent years, his appearances have included:

Mr. Weiss has also been a guest on numerous radio shows including CBS Radio, Air America Radio, Talk Radio News Service, the Peter B. Collins Show and the Associated Press Radio, and has been featured in many articles published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Weiss’ efforts to help those in need extend outside his law practice and into his personal life. He is involved in numerous community and charitable organizations, and has been a participant in various political activities. Such activities have included serving as a member of the Rules Committee and as a delegate to Democratic Presidential National Conventions.

STEPHEN DAVID MURAKAMI: MANGING PARTNER

 Stephen David Murakami is a native of the Aloha State.  He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and did one tour of duty in the Republic of South Viet Nam (1968-1970) where he reached the rank of Sergeant (E-5) at the age of 19 before being honorably discharged.  He attended the University of Oregon as an undergraduate majoring in Renaissance Literature and Asian Studies, graduating with Honors and elected to Phi Beta Kappa (1974).  In 1976 he returned to Oregon to attend the University of Oregon Law School in order to study Ocean Resources Law and International Law.  He also attended Tokyo University Law School for International Law Studies in Japan before obtaining his JD in May 1979. 

 Upon graduating from Oregon, Mr. Murakami was offered a position as a foreign attorney at a Japanese International law firm (1979) in Tokyo, Japan, where he was assigned to liaise with the firm’s foreign clientele to bridge the cultural divide between Japanese culture and legal systems and Western systems of jurisprudence and civil litigation.  In 1980, Mr. Murakami relocated to Berlin, West Germany to take up employment with a German International law firm to work on European Anti-Trust issues.  Over the next decade, Mr. Murakami served as a legal consultant to foreign investors and corporations seeking to establish a presence in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.  During this period he also traveled extensively throughout India, Nepal and Southeast Asia.  By the time Desert Shield and Desert Storm began to change the military and political landscape of the Middle East, Mr. Murakami returned to the United States and found employment with a large plaintiffs’ firm in New York City where he was exposed to mass tort and complex litigation issues, Tobacco, pharmaceutical and medical device litigations.  By 1997, Mr. Murakami was tapped to set up, organize and manage a mass tort unit consisting of two attorneys and 18 support staff which filed and eventually settled more than 5,500 Diet Drug (Fen-Phen) cases. 

 After the September 11^th WTC Terrorist Attacks, Mr. Murakami volunteered six months of his time to serve as a pro bono attorney assisting victims with completing claims and affidavits for financial relief, including translation assistance for Japanese Nationals.  He also represented a high profile victim who was one of the last persons found alive after the collapse of the North Tower.  Mr. Murakami represented this victim and his wife with submitting their claims pursuant to the Victims Compensation Fund administered by Mr. Kenneth Feinberg.  Believing that the initial award allocated under the VCF was not reflective of the extent of anguish, pain and suffering this family endured, due to an unfair provision of the VCF Rules as applied to this young couple, Mr. Murakami successfully appealed the initial award.  In 2004, Mr. Murakami joined Robert H. Weiss to represent thousands of WorldCom employees and investors who suffered catastrophic economic losses due to the enormous fraud committed by the WorldCom defendants.  The Weiss Firm was one of only a handful of firms able to secure a multimillion dollar punitive damages and compensatory award from Citigroup in a WorldCom Securities Arbitration.  In March, 2007, Messrs. Weiss and Murakami filed the first Bisphenol-A Consumer Class Action Case in the country on behalf of the infants and children whose parents purchased polycarbonate plastic baby bottles and training cups containing the toxic chemical (BPA).  The Weiss Firm was appointed to the BPA Multidistrict Litigation Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee to assist in the management of the litigation.

 In April 2010, Murakami and Weiss, along with several co-counsel, filed a class action case against Cabot Corporation, Inc., Koppers Industries, Inc., and Beazer East, Inc., on behalf of the families and residents of the Stephen Foster Neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida after a random sampling of the homes in the community, which borders the Cabot-Koppers industrial site, confirmed the presence of highly elevated levels of dioxins and dioxin-like chemicals.  The Koppers Company operated a 90 acre Wood Treatment facility preserving wooden telephone poles and other wood products for decades utilizing some of the most toxic chemicals known to cause cancers and injury to humans.  The Cabot-Koppers facility was designated as a Superfund Site in 1984 by the U.S. EPA, but to date, the site has not been cleaned up.   The plaintiffs are demanding that defendants remediate and clean up their environment and homes or otherwise relocate them from the toxic environment.

Mr. Murakami’s Bar Admissions include: New York State Bar (May 1982); U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York (1993); The U.S. Court of Federal Claims (2002) and numerous Pro Hac Vice admissions in State and Federal Courts across the county. His areas of practice include Consumer Rights Issues, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Litigation, Mass Toxic Torts, Medical Malpractice, Securities Arbitrations and Litigation and Environmental Law.  Mr. Murakami has been a member of the American Association for Justice (formerly known as ATLA) since 2002 and The New York State Bar Assn. since1982.  Murakami has also served as a Co-chairman of the AAJ Securities Litigation Group since 2006.

 

 

About Us