Milberg Class Action: Kickback Scandal and Malpractice Settlement

The Milberg class action law firm, formally Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman PLLC, is a nationwide plaintiffs’ firm that files consumer, securities, privacy, antitrust, and mass-tort class actions on behalf of individuals and businesses. It traces its roots to a New York securities practice founded by Lawrence Milberg and Melvyn Weiss in 1965, and today it is the most active plaintiffs’ firm in federal class action filings in the United States, with 1,650 cases filed across 80 federal districts between 2023 and 2025.¹ The firm reports more than $50 billion in total client recoveries over its history.² Its past also includes a federal kickback prosecution in the 2000s that sent four name partners to prison, a history anyone evaluating the firm should know about.

What the Firm Handles Today

Milberg litigates across a wide range of class action and mass-tort categories: securities fraud, consumer protection, antitrust, environmental and toxic torts, employment and civil rights, pharmaceutical and medical devices, data privacy, and insurance disputes.³

Privacy and data breach work has become one of its busiest areas. The firm says it served as lead or co-lead counsel in more than 50 class action settlements involving privacy violations over a recent three-year span, with approved settlements including $6.7 million against Novant Health over patient data sharing and $2.9 million against Wright & Filippis over a data breach.⁴ It has also filed suits under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and the federal Video Privacy Protection Act over tracking tools such as Meta Pixel and Google Analytics, with 2025 and 2026 cases against companies including Aflac, Coinbase, Kelly Benefits, and Yahoo.⁵

On the environmental side, the firm represents municipalities, water districts, state attorneys general, and individuals in the Aqueous Film Forming Foam MDL in South Carolina federal court, part of the sprawling litigation over PFAS “forever chemicals.” That MDL included more than 6,000 cases as of late 2023. Major manufacturers in the broader litigation have reached large settlements, including a tentative $10.3 billion deal from 3M in June 2023 to resolve public water supplier claims, and a combined $1.185 billion from DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva. Thousands of claims remain unresolved.⁶

Notable Recoveries

Milberg’s largest reported recoveries, some predating its current configuration, include:

$1.25 billion in a nationwide class settlement for Black farmers denied equal access to USDA loan programs.
$1.14 billion in a securities class action settlement against Nortel Networks Corp.
$1.062 billion in a securities class action settlement against Merck & Co.
$1 billion in the W.R. Grace & Co. bankruptcy litigation for asbestos personal injury and property damage claims.
$580 million in the Cathode Ray Tube antitrust litigation.
$330 million in a securities fraud settlement against Rite Aid Corp.⁷

In employment work, the firm secured a $75 million class settlement against Farmers Insurance Exchange over the alleged misclassification of insurance agents as independent contractors and an $11.1 million jury verdict in a wrongful termination case against IBM.⁸ Earlier high-profile matters included the $1.027 billion NASDAQ Market Makers Antitrust settlement in 1998 and a role as co-lead counsel in the $3.2 billion Tyco securities settlement approved in 2007.²

Mass Arbitration

Milberg has moved aggressively into mass arbitration, a tactic in which a firm files hundreds or thousands of individual arbitration demands at once against a single company. The approach is designed to get around class action waivers that many consumer contracts embed in their arbitration clauses. The firm says it has recovered more than $250 million this way, with its two largest disclosed results being a $64.5 million settlement with Meta Platforms covering roughly four million consumers and a $35 million settlement with Snap, Inc. covering about three million consumers.⁹

Mass arbitration has drawn industry scrutiny. Defense-side attorneys and industry groups have argued that some firms prioritize claim volume over quality, using the per-case arbitration fees companies must pay as leverage to force settlements. The American Arbitration Association and JAMS both adopted new mass arbitration rules in 2024 that require claimants’ counsel to verify the accuracy of each filing and that appoint process arbitrators to screen out baseless demands early.¹⁰

The Kickback Scandal

Anyone researching the firm will quickly encounter the kickback prosecution, and the facts are not minor. In May 2006, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned a 20-count indictment against the firm, then known as Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, charging it with obstruction of justice, perjury, bribery, and fraud.¹¹

Prosecutors said firm partners had, for decades, secretly paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to individuals who agreed to serve as named plaintiffs in class action and shareholder derivative lawsuits. The paid plaintiffs had an incentive to maximize attorney fees rather than recovery for the class they were supposed to represent, and the arrangements were hidden from judges and opposing counsel through false statements in filings and depositions. Payments were routed through intermediaries.¹²

Three paid plaintiffs were central: Dr. Steven Cooperman, an ophthalmologist alleged to have received roughly $6.5 million for serving in nearly 70 lawsuits; Seymour Lazar, a retired lawyer alleged to have collected about $2.4 million for roughly 70 cases between 1981 and 2004; and Howard Vogel, a retired mortgage broker who admitted to receiving around $2.5 million for about 40 lawsuits.¹¹

Four name partners eventually pleaded guilty:

Co-founder Melvyn Weiss pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy in April 2008, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, ordered to forfeit $9.75 million, and fined $250,000.¹²
William Lerach, who had led the West Coast operation before splitting off, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to two years.¹²
David Bershad pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months.¹³
Steven Schulman pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months.¹³

The firm itself avoided criminal prosecution. In June 2008, operating by then as Milberg LLP, it entered a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice, paying $75 million, agreeing to employ a compliance monitor, and adopting a “Best Practices Program” for two years. In exchange, the government declined to charge the entity.¹⁴

How the Current Firm Came Together

The name on the door changed more than once after the scandal. In January 2018, Milberg merged with Sanders Phillips Grossman, a firm with more than 30 years in pharmaceutical and defective-product litigation, and operated for a period as Milberg Tadler Phillips Grossman.¹⁵ In January 2021, a four-firm consolidation combined Milberg Phillips Grossman LLP, Sanders Phillips Grossman LLC, Greg Coleman Law PC, and Whitfield Bryson LLP into the current entity, Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman PLLC.¹⁶

Named partners from the merger include Marc Grossman, Glenn Phillips, Greg Coleman, and Dan Bryson. The firm’s global headquarters is a limited liability corporation in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with principal U.S. operations in Knoxville, Tennessee, and additional offices across the country and in London.²

Filing Volume and Current Ranking

According to the 2026 Lex Machina Class Action Litigation Report, Milberg was the most active plaintiffs’ firm in federal class action filings in both 2024 and 2025. The firm’s filings grew each year: 448 in 2023, 533 in 2024, and 669 in 2025, for a three-year total of 1,650 cases. The next-closest firms were Stein Saks at 1,570 and Gottlieb & Associates at 1,207.¹ Federal class action filings industry-wide reached 12,284 cases in 2025, driven largely by data breach litigation. Milberg Senior Partner Gary Klinger was individually ranked ninth nationally among plaintiff-side attorneys for federal class action filings.⁵

A Recent Malpractice Settlement

One other matter is worth knowing about. In Bobbitt v. Milberg LLP, investors sued the firm for mishandling a class action against Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company. A class had been certified, but the case collapsed after Milberg’s attorneys missed expert witness disclosure deadlines, leading to decertification and dismissal, and the firm then failed to notify absent class members about what had happened.¹⁷ In April 2023, an Arizona federal judge gave preliminary approval to a $32 million settlement of the malpractice claims.¹⁸

1
Lex Machina. Class Action Litigation Report 2026
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Milberg. About Us
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Milberg. Class Action Lawsuits
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Milberg. Milberg Third-Most Consumer Protection Lawsuits
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Milberg. News
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Milberg. PFAS Litigation
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Milberg. Outstanding Recoveries
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Milberg. Employment and Civil Rights
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Milberg. Mass Arbitration
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American Bar Association. Evolution of Mass Arbitration
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The New York Times. Federal Indictment of Class Action Law Firm
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U.S. Department of Justice. Melvyn Weiss Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison
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Yahoo Finance. Mel Weiss, Hero or Villain of the Plaintiffs’ Bar
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U.S. Department of Justice. Milberg Non-Prosecution Agreement
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Global Legal Post. Class Action Law Firm Milberg Joins Forces With Pharmaceutical Litigation Law Firm
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PR Newswire. Renowned Law Firm Milberg Set to Expand in 2021
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vLex. Bobbitt v. Milberg LLP
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Law360. Milberg Clients Get Initial OK of $32M Deal in Malpractice Suit