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Experience and Background
Steven B. Weisburd's practice cuts across several of Dechert's litigation practice groups--including general business litigation, class action defense, mass torts and product liability, and appellate work in the federal and state appellate courts as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.
He concentrates his practice primarily in the area of complex civil litigation, focusing on trial and appellate matters for a variety of businesses and industries. He has particularly extensive experience litigating consumer class actions, products liability and unfair competition cases, as well as general business litigation. Mr. Weisburd has been or is currently lead or co-lead trial counsel, or lead legal/strategic counsel, in litigation pending across the country for clients that are among the nation's leading companies in the pharmaceutical, tobacco, communications, cable, and outdoor retail industries. Before joining Dechert's Austin office in 2006, Mr. Weisburd was a partner in the Los Angeles, California office of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.
In major business and consumer fraud litigation over the past two decades, Mr. Weisburd has represented and advised a broad array of corporate defendants in significant matters on a national counsel basis--including AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Philip Morris/Altria, Google Inc., Time Warner Cable, Microsoft Corp., Universal Music Group and Universal Pictures, and Bass Pro Outdoor, among others. He has a lengthy track record of winning critical cases in the trial and appellate courts, and a string of successes in defeating class certification or otherwise prevailing on summary judgment in consumer fraud cases seeking imposition of massive monetary relief.
Bar and Court Admissions
- Member, Texas and California Bars
- Admitted to practice before U.S. District Courts throughout California and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits
- Has been admitted pro hac vice on behalf of clients in numerous state courts throughout the country as well as in foreign jurisdictions
Significant Representations
-- Mr. Weisburd is currently lead counsel for AstraZeneca on legal motion strategy and advocacy in the Seroquel litigation across the nation, including federal MDL proceedings as well as coordinated state-court proceedings in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, and individual cases in Alabama, Missouri, and California. The Seroquel mass-tort litigation involves more than 20,000 individual product liability actions in which plaintiffs principally allege that ingestion of the FDA-approved atypical antipsychotic Seroquel caused them to get diabetes.
-- In 2009, Mr. Weisburd prepared the meritorious briefing and successfully argued Daubert and summary judgment motions for AstraZeneca in Guinn v. AstraZeneca Pharms. LP, 598 F. Supp. 2d 1239 (M.D. Fla. 2009), Haller v. AstraZeneca Pharms., LP, 598 F. Supp. 2d 1271 (M.D. Fla. 2009), and Scaife v. AstraZeneca LP, 2009 WL 1610575 (Del. Super. Ct. June 9, 2009) -- which include plaintiff counsel's hand-selected "best" cases in the Seroquel litigation's bellwether programs.
-- Mr. Weisburd recently argued and won the appeal of plaintiff's lead MDL case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. See Guinn v. AstraZeneca Pharms. LP, __ F.3d __, 2010 WL 1286947 (11th Cir. Apr. 6, 2010).
-- Mr. Weisburd also recently argued and won summary judgment for AstraZeneca in one of the lead New Jersey bellwether cases, Tate v. AstraZeneca Pharms. LP, No. MID-L-1608-07-MT, Feb. 5, 2010 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. Feb. 5, 2010), and was on AstraZeneca's trial team (led by Dechert partner Diane Sullivan) in securing a defense verdict for AstraZeneca on March 18, 2010 from a New Jersey state-court jury after an almost four-week trial in another leading New Jersey bellwether case, Baker v. AstraZeneca Pharms. LP.
-- Mr. Weisburd currently represents Google Inc. in a putative nationwide consumer class action pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, based on allegations concerning alleged problems with the Google phone manufactured and marketed by Google, T-Mobile, and HTC Corp., McKinney v. Google Inc. et al.
-- For more than a decade, Mr. Weisburd has been among Philip Morris' national counsel in consumer-fraud class action litigation against the tobacco industry, while also advising the company on critical legal and strategic issues, including federal preemption and regulatory issues. While at Dechert and Munger Tolles, Mr. Weisburd argued and/or was a principal legal strategist and architect of the meritorious briefing in a series of legal victories, including:
-- Defeating class certification or prevailing on summary judgment in consumer fraud actions pending in state or federal courts across the country (including California, Washington, New Mexico, Illinois, and New Jersey) in cases involving the allegedly deceptive marketing of "light" cigarettes. For instance, Mr. Weisburd argued and prepared the winning class certification opposition briefing in Davies v. Philip Morris Inc., 2006 WL 1600067 (Wash. Super. Ct., May 26, 2006), aff'd, slip op. (Wash. 2007), and led the successful briefing effort resulting in denial of class certification in numerous other "lights" cases, such as Mulford v. Philip Morris Inc., 242 F.R.D. 615 (D.N.M. 2007) and Stern v. Philip Morris Inc., slip op., No. MID-L-2584-03 (N.J. Super. Ct. Nov. 16, 2007).
-- Prevailing on summary judgment on preemption and First Amendment grounds in the trial court and on appeal in cases involving alleged youth marketing and other issues. For instance, Mr. Weisburd led the successful briefing effort resulting in defense summary judgment in the trial court in In re Tobacco Cases II (JCCP 4042) in the Daniels youth-marketing case, see 2002 WL 31628641 (Cal. Super. Ct., Nov. 22, 2002), aff'd., 20 Cal. Rptr. 693 (Cal. App. [4th DCA.] 2004), aff'd, 41 Cal. 4th 1257 (Cal. 2007), and partial summary judgment in the Brown case, see 2004 WL 2445337 (Cal. Super. Ct. Aug. 4, 2004).
-- Mr. Weisburd has for several years represented leading national cable television provider Time Warner Cable in business tort litigation, and is presently co-lead defense counsel for the company in consumer fraud class action litigation pending in California, Swinegar v. Time Warner Cable (L.A. Super. Ct.).
-- Over the past decade, Mr. Weisburd has represented an array of major corporate defendants in trial and/or appellate proceedings involving California's consumer fraud statutes, Business & Professions Code §§ 17200, 17500, including application of Proposition 64's amendments to those statutes.
Mr. Weisburd's varied practice has also included the successful representation large business associations and other parties as amicus curiae in key appellate matters. For instance, Mr. Weisburd represented a major business association as amicus curiae in the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the proper interpretation and application of Congress's heightened pleading standards applicable to securities fraud complaints, successfully contributing to Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights Ltd., 551 U.S. 308 (2007). He also successfully represented several business associations as amici curiae in the California Supreme Court and California Courts of Appeal concerning whether Proposition 64's amendments to that state's false advertising and unfair competition statutes apply retroactively to pending cases, including in Californians for Disability Rights v. Mervyn's LLC, 39 Cal. 4th 223 (2006), and Branick v. Downey Savings & Loan Ass'n, 39 Cal. 4th 235 (2006).
Education
University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., magna cum laude, 1988, Phi Beta Kappa
Stanford Law School, J.D., with distinction, 1992, editor of the Stanford Law Review
University of Cambridge, LL.M., first class honors, 1994, advanced law degree in jurisprudence, civil liberties, free speech, and international commercial litigation
Judicial Clerkship, the Honorable Alfred T. Goodwin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1992-1993)
Publications and Lectures
Mr. Weisburd is a frequent lecturer at national consumer fraud class action seminars across the country, and has recently published articles in that area as well as others on important legal developments and issues, including:
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