Steve Berman (lawyer)


Steve W. Berman is an American plaintiff's lawyer and entrepreneur who founded and is Managing Partner of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, a 76-attorney law firm based in Seattle, Washington.

Career

Berman helped found his namesake firm in 1993. He was lead attorney in individual and class action cases against Enron, Washington Public Power Supply System, Purdue Pharma, Exxon, Boeing, Intel, Michael Milken, the Rio Tinto mining company, and Visa Inc. and MasterCard. He was also instrumental in the state attorneys general’s litigation against the Liggett Group and subsequent $216 billion settlement, against the tobacco industry, serving as special assistant to the various states. He was lead counsel for Microsoft during part of its defense against antitrust claims.
In 2003, Berman and his family endowed the Kathy and Steve Berman Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law. In April 2009, it was announced that funding for the clinic had been eliminated and it would not be continued beyond the 2008-2009 academic year.
He has been listed as top lawyer in Washington state and one of the 100 most powerful lawyers in the United States by the National Law Journal.
In 2006, he sued Apple Inc., alleging that iPod music players could cause hearing loss if the volume were too high.
In 2007, Berman filed a class action lawsuit against Avvo, a law-related review site, on behalf of Seattle, Washington attorney John Henry Browne, over the claimed unfairness of the site's rating system. That suit was dismissed on First Amendment grounds.
In October 2009, he filed a class action lawsuit accusing the PulteGroup of artificially propping up house sales prices and contributing to the United States housing bubble. The lawsuit was dismissed by the court.
In 2012, he was involved in a class action suit related to asprin which was settled with Bayer.
In 2018, Law360 selected Steve Berman as one of three attorneys for its MVP of the Year Award in its "Class Action" category.