Robert L. Lieff graduated Columbia University Law School.
From 1965 to 1972, Mr. Lieff litigated as a name partner with the late Melvin Belli “The King of Torts”, in San Francisco at the law firm of Belli, Ashe, Ellison, Choulos & Lieff.
In 1972, Robert L. Lieff founded the firm Lieff Cabraser.
Lieff Cabraser, is a 120-plus attorney AV-rated law firm with offices in San Francisco, New York, Nashville, and Munich. The firm has a widely diversified practice, successfully representing plaintiffs in the fields of personal injury and mass torts, securities and financial fraud, employment discrimination and unlawful employment practices, product defect, consumer protection, antitrust, environmental and toxic exposures, False Claims Act, digital privacy and data security, and human rights.
For more than three decades, though 2006, as the firm’s founder and managing partner, Mr. Lieff was the principal architect of Lieff Cabraser. Under his leadership, the firm became, as described by The American Lawyer, “one of the nation’s premier plaintiffs’ firms.”
Mr. Lieff was a key player in multiple landmark civil cases including the Exxon Valdez oil disaster and the Holocaust litigation. In 1996, in the national tobacco industry litigation, Mr. Lieff spearheaded the first settlement with a tobacco company. The settlement signaled the end of forty years of success by tobacco companies in defeating health-related lawsuits. Two years later, an unprecedented $206 billion settlement was announced between the tobacco industry and the states’ attorneys general.
In the early 2000s, Mr. Lieff created an international network of lawyers that meets annually at the Global Justice Forum. The first forum occurred in London in 2005. Subsequent forums have taken place in Paris, Rome, and New York. More than 300 lawyers from 30 countries on six continents have attended the Global Justice Forum.
Through a gift of all the attorneys’ fees from the firm’s Holocaust litigation, the firm, under Mr. Lieff’s leadership, endowed the Lieff Cabraser Clinical Professorship of Human Rights Law at Mr. Lieff’s alma mater, Columbia Law School. Mr. Lieff endowed a second chair at Columbia Law School as The Robert L. Lieff Professorship of Law: Director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies. Mr. Lieff is also a member of the Dean’s Council at Columbia Law School.
In January of 2007, Mr. Lieff stepped down from management of Lieff Cabraser and became Of Counsel. During that time, he continued to bring business to the firm and to participate in cases. He was compensated for his contributions in the cases based on a percentage of the fee in the case.
As of January 1, 2023, Mr. Lieff severed his relationship with Lieff Cabraser. Since that time Mr. Lieff has been practicing law on his own, working together with several prominent law firms in the field of contingent fee class action litigation.
Specifically, Mr. Lieff has handled cases arising out of the fire and flood in Santa Barbara and medical malpractice cases.
At the present time Mr. Lieff is involved in two very significant cases. Roundup Litigation and FTX Crypto Currency Litigation.
Robert L. Lieff has never sent anyone a bill.
Highlighted Cases of Robert L. Lieff
Monsanto Roundup Injury Litigation (2023)
Representing victims alleging their cancer injuries were caused by use of Monsanto’s unsafe Roundup pesticide. After Lieff Cabraser was turned down by Judge Chhabria in its efforts to have a two-billion-dollar settlement approved which Mr. Lieff brought to the firm, Mr. Lieff continues to represent the plaintiff class of Hispanic farmworkers. Over the last year 2023, he has engaged additional counsel including Quinn Emanuel, a firm of 1,000 lawyers headquartered in Los Angeles. Mr. Lieff and Quinn Emanuel continue to negotiate with Bayer, the parent of Monsanto.
FTX Crypto Currency Litigation (2023)
Mr. Lieff is currently handling the well known FTX case involving the loss through Crypto Currency deposits of approximately 10 billion dollars from hundreds of thousands of individuals. Mr. Lieff is handling the FTX case together with other firms including Boies Schiller Flexner, and offices of Joseph R. Saveri.
Multi-State Tobacco Litigation (1998), wherein Lieff Cabraser represented the Attorneys General of Massachusetts, Louisiana and Illinois, several additional states, and 21 cities and counties in California, in litigation against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and other cigarette manufacturers, part of the landmark $206 billion settlement announced in November 1998 between the tobacco industry and the states’ attorneys general; in California alone, Lieff Cabraser’s clients were awarded an estimated $12.5 billion to be paid through 2025.
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Litigation, No. 3:89-cv-0095 HRH (D. Al.)
Lieff Cabraser served as Plaintiffs’ Co-Class Counsel and on the Class Trial Team that tried the case before a jury in federal court in 1994 that led to a jury award of $5 billion in punitive damages reduced in subsequent appellate review; in 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals set the punitive damages award at $2.5 billion, and subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court further reduced the punitive damages award to $507.5 million, an amount equal to the compensatory damages, such that with interest, the total award to the plaintiff class was $977 million.
Aviation Disaster and Crash Cases
Successful recoveries for victim families, including the Gol Airlines Flight 1907 Amazon crash (2006); the Lexington, Kentucky Comair CRJ-100 Commuter Flight Crash (2006); the Helios Airways Flight 522 Athens, Greece crash (2005); the Manhattan Tourist Helicopter Crash (2005); the U.S. Army Blackhawk Helicopter Tower Collision (2004); the Air Algerie Boeing 737 Crash (2003); the Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines Airbus Disaster (1994); the United Airlines Boeing 747 Hawaii Disaster (1989); Lockheed F-104 Fighter Crashes (1974).
Aviation Litigation
While Mr. Lieff was at the Belli firm, he was involved in a number of aviation disaster cases. These included the crash of Pacific Airlines in the 1960’s near San Francisco. That case involved when Rodriguez was walking around the Reno airport and was carrying a loaded pistol. He purchased insurance for the flight from a vending machine which in those days allowed a passenger to purchase insurance for a single flight. He was flying to San Francisco, and en route, he opened the cockpit door and shot the pilot and the co-pilot, of course, causing the plane to crash. 30+ people were killed and the Belli office represented the families.
Mr. Lieff, in addition to the litigation against the airline, initiated litigation against the insurance company based on the failure to properly interview applicants for insurance. This could have been done by a person at a counter rather than a machine. Certainly, that person would have seen that person with a gun in his hand and not have sold him insurance.
Although the theory against the insurance company failed and the battle was lost, the war was won when the insurance companies stopped selling insurance for flights at airports from machines.
Another aviation case that Mr. Lieff handled at the Belli firm was the crash of several hundred F-104 fighters manufactured by Lockheed. The German Luftwaffe purchased the planes and converted them from high altitude fighters and made them low altitude bombers. The planes crashed and were known as the “flying coffin”. The cases were ultimately settled after Mr. Lieff took several trips to Germany for the taking of depositions.
This case was a perfect example of a manufacturer (Lockheed) wise enough to simply litigate the case and then settle it rather than move to have it dismissed on Forum Non-Conveniens grounds which the other counsel for the airlines did in subsequent cases.
At Lieff Cabraser, Mr. Lieff was involved in the Aeroflot jet that was manufactured by Boeing that crashed in Siberia going between Moscow and Hong Kong. The pilot brought his two children on the flight and foolishly put his son in the pilot seat when he went to the restroom. The son unwittingly disengaged the autopilot causing the plane to crash and the pilot was prevented by returning to the cockpit by centrifugal force. This case was referred by Melvin Belli to Lieff Cabraser and they litigated the case together.
After the Aeroflot case, there was a rash of crashes of aircraft mainly manufactured in the US and sold to third world countries abroad. There were a host of crashes in such places as Indonesia, Siberia, the Amazon, China, Mongolia, Egypt and other third world countries. Mr. Lieff ended up representing more death cases for passengers on these planes than every other lawyer in the US representing families combined.
Al Salam Boccaccio 98
In February of 2006, to accommodate the need for labor in Saudi Arabia, migrant workers were shipped across the Red Sea from Egypt. The available ship, the Al Salam Boccaccio, was able to carry about 600 passengers. The Saudi Prince who owned the ship modified it by adding additional floors on top of the existing ones and made it totally unsafe. In a minor storm the ship, being too top heavy, tipped over and the captain and his officers escaped on the only lifeboat. 1000 migrant worker passengers drowned. Mr. Lieff and a group of lawyers form Italy, Spain, France, Egypt, England, and Saudi Arabia continue to represent the families of the deceased. Mr. Lieff’s firm, Lieff Cabraser, chose not to become involved in the litigation and Mr. Lieff persisted to litigate with his colleagues and without his firm. The case is pending in Genoa, Italy and is against Rina, a licensing authority in Italy.
Cruz v. U.S., Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Wells Fargo Bank, et al. No. 01-0892-CRB (N.D. Cal.)
Mr. Lieff’s passion for viticulture and personal experiences working alongside day laborers in numerous vineyards led the firm into correcting a 60-year injustice on behalf of Mexican workers and laborers, known as Braceros (“strong arms”), who came from Mexico to the United States pursuant to bilateral agreements from 1942 through 1946 to aid American farms and industries hurt by employee shortages during World War II, but from whom 10% of wages were withheld in forced savings accounts which were never paid out to the Braceros; despite significant obstacles including the aging and passing away of many Braceros, statutes of limitation hurdles, and strong defenses to claims under contract and international law, plaintiffs prevailed in an historic and meaningful restitution settlement in 2009.
Holocaust Survivor Cases
Lieff Cabraser was one of the leading firms that prosecuted claims by Holocaust survivors and the heirs of Holocaust survivors and victims against banks and private manufacturers and other corporations who enslaved and/or looted the assets of Jews and other minority groups persecuted by the Nazi Regime during the Second World War era; the firm served as Settlement Class Counsel in the case against the Swiss banks for which the Court approved a U.S. $1.25 billion settlement in July 2000 (notably, Lieff Cabraser donated its attorneys’ fees in the Swiss Banks case, in the amount of $1.5 million, to endow a Human Rights clinical chair at Columbia University Law School); the firm was also active in slave labor and property litigation against German and Austrian defendants, and Nazi-era banking litigation against French banks, in connection with which Lieff Cabraser participated in multi-national negotiations that led to Executive Agreements establishing an additional approximately U.S. $5 billion in funds for survivors and victims of Nazi persecution.
Foreign Exchange Litigation
In 2008, after Mr. Lieff officially retired from the firm, he was referred to a case by a colleague of his in Boston involving State St. Later, a second referral from the same source referred to a case against The Bank of New York, Andrew Mellon. These cases involved the two custodial banks, each with approximately 1,000 clients who were hedge funds and invested in foreign currency in order to acquire foreign securities. The allegations were that the banks charge their client the highest price of the day for purchases and the lowest price of the day for sales, as opposed to the price when the sale was executed. Each case was worth approximately one billion dollars and the cases were settled for approximately $300 million dollars each. The fees amounted to over 25% of the income of Lieff Cabraser for the years they were settled.
Global Justice Forum/Network
From his time at the Belli firm, Mr. Lieff has been interested in litigation outside of the United States and he has tried to make a contribution to that litigation. In 2005, he initiated the Global Justice Forum/Network. The Forum was an annual informational meeting held at Columbia Law School and at some locations in Europe. The forum met in London, Paris, Rome, Zurich, Vienna, and other cities. The forum at Columbia and in Europe was attended by representatives from more than 300 countries over 6 continents. The purpose of the forum was to export ideas from the United States, such as class actions to Europe with the expectation that later this would involve Asia, South America, and Africa.
Robert in the New York Times: “Anger and Suspicion as Survivors Await Chinese Crash Report”
Robert L. Lieff “The Omniscient” with “The Lawyers from Hell”