Emblematic of the diversity of his practice, Weiss has for almost two decades represented family and corporate farmers throughout the United States in milestone litigation involving the improper commercialization of GMO seed. Weiss is the only attorney in the country who has held court-appointed leadership positions in the nation’s three largest GMO-related recoveries: the $110 million recovery in 2003 involving the Starlink corn seed (Co-Lead Counsel); the $1 billion recovery involving the Bayer rice seed in 2011 (Plaintiff’s Executive Committee); and the $1.51 billion settlement in 2018 involving the Syngenta corn seed (Plaintiff’s Executive Committee).
Weiss’s trial work on behalf of family farmers is similarly notable. In September 2006, he and his co-trial counsel won a $4.5 million jury verdict in Jackson County, Missouri following a three-week odor nuisance trial against one of the nation’s largest industrial hog producers on behalf of six neighbors of the defendants’ vast farm operations in northern Missouri. This verdict was followed by an $11 million verdict following a 5-week trial in March 2010 on behalf of fifteen individuals in related litigation against the same defendants, which at its time was the largest nuisance verdict ever obtained against a hog producer.
Currently, Weiss represents several hundred survivors of sexual abuse and harassment throughout the United States, and has written and been quoted as an authority in numerous articles addressing sex abuse issues.
Before founding Seeger Weiss, Weiss spent a decade at one of the leading international corporate defense firms, where he represented dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Moved by the disproportion in power between individuals and the giant corporations that wronged them, Steve decided to become a plaintiffs’ attorney to help level the legal playing field. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.
Born in New York City and raised in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Weiss remains active with his alma mater, Cardozo Law, serving on its school’s Board of Overseers for over 20 years before being named an Honorary Overseer in 2020. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and as Vice President, First Department, of the New York State Academy of Trial Lawyers.