David Howard Berg

David Berg is a member of the Texas and New York State Bar Associations, and the founding partner of Berg & Androphy. Within eighteen months of opening his offices, in 1970, David argued and won a case in the U.S. Supreme Court, Schacht v. United States, a criminal conviction unanimously reversed on First Amendment grounds.

During the next quarter-century, David tried criminal and civil rights cases, among the more notable, the lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan he filed as co-counsel with his friend, Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which resulted in forcing the Klan to end its harassment of Vietnamese fishermen along the Gulf Coast and its paramilitary training in east Texas.

In 1991, he tried his first civil cases, winning a record verdict in a wrongful death action at a railroad crossing and another filed against Robert Sakowitz, heir to a merchandising empire—resulting in David being named to the National Law Journal’s annual list of Top Ten civil trial lawyers the next year. Since then he has successfully represented individuals and corporations in major commercial litigation, such as Robert Bass’s investment group (then called Acadia Partners, Ltd.), for which he won a jury verdict worth $52 million; Samsung, in a patent infringement case that threatened its billion dollar line of business, which ended when the judge dismissed the case following a pretrial evidentiary hearing on inequitable conduct; Deutsche Bank (as co-counsel) in the Enron class action, resulting in its dismissal from the case on summary judgment and most recently, XO Communication’s Special Committee in various class and derivative actions against it that were dismissed in 2014. In addition to commercial cases, David is currently involved in major probate-related litigation, one of his favorite areas of the law.

Throughout his career, David has maintained a pro bono practice, including, on behalf of the City of Houston, a recent case in which Texas’s leading polluter agreed to (and has) lowered its emissions of the carcinogen 1,3 butadiene to statistically insignificant levels–ending its effect on surrounding neighborhoods. In another case involving the emission of toxic chemicals into the poverty-stricken neighborhood adjoining it, upon learning that the city council had approved retaining David, the company in question closed its plant and left town.

In 2012 and 2013, David Berg and Joel Androphy were selected as New York Top Rated Attorneys by Martindale-Hubbel® and ALM, the Nation’s largest publisher of legal media.

The firm of Berg & Androphy was awarded, in 2013 and 2014, the prestigious “Best Law Firms” Tier 1 Ranking for Multiple Practice Areas by U.S. News & World Report.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has selected David Berg as the recipient of the 2014 Karen H. Susman Jurisprudence award.

David Berg is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

David Berg has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America, multiple times for more than a decade, in eight practice areas, putting him among the top 100 lawyers in the publication, based on the number of trial specialties. David’s eight Best Lawyers in America practice areas include:

•              Bet-the-Company Litigation

•              Commercial Litigation

•              Criminal Defense – White Collar

•              Litigation – Antitrust

•              Litigation – Patent

•              Litigation – Real Estate

•              Litigation – Securities

•              Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs

David is a frequent CLE lecturer on trial skills for such organizations as the ABA, the ABA Litigation Section and the Texas Bar Association. David is a frequent contributor to legal and other periodicals on wide-ranging topics. His 2006 book, THE TRIAL LAWYER: WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN, has become one of the ABA’s best-selling books and is now available as DVD/Book Package with 6 hours of CLE Credit.