Robin L. Greenwald

Renowned environmental and consumer class action attorney Robin Greenwald, Esq., is one of our distinguished “of counsel” lawyers — meaning, she possesses knowledge and skills that make her of incalculable special importance to our clients and to us.

A former Assistant United States Attorney and Assistant Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Section, Ms. Greenwald today heads the Weitz & Luxenberg Environmental Toxic Torts and Consumer Protection Litigation group. She joined Weitz & Luxenberg in 2005 and has since then led her team to several notable triumphs — most recently a trial and a class action settlement as a member of the Plaintiffs Steering Committee in the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Her efforts helped to secure full compensation for hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of the spill.

She also successfully served the firm as lead counsel in multidistrict litigation against more than 50 petroleum companies for contaminating the nation’s groundwater with the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether). Her efforts helped to create new law on theories of market share liability and successfully defended against defendants’ preemption arguments.

She is also liaison counsel in the consumer class action against General Motors for knowingly selling several models of vehicles equipped with an ignition switch defect that caused catastrophic injuries and economic loss to those who own the vehicles. She has also brought several lawsuits against insurance carriers and laptop computer makers for breaching individual’s privacy.

Prior to her arrival at Weitz & Luxenberg, Ms. Greenwald was a Clinical Professor of environmental law at Rutgers University School of Law and Director of that institution’s Environmental Law Clinic. From 2001-03, Ms. Greenwald served as Executive Director of the international nonprofit water-conservation organization, Waterkeeper Alliance.

Earlier, beginning in 1999, the U.S. Department of the Interior chose her to serve as General Counsel in the office of its Inspector General. Some years prior to that, she held the position of Deputy Chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Brooklyn, New York and Assistant Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Unit in charge of Legislation, Policy and Special Litigation, in Washington, DC.