Michael Burg
About Michael Burg
Michael S. Burg is one of America's leading trial lawyers, a best-selling author, and founding shareholder of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh Jardine. He began his career fighting for the underdog and has spent nearly five decades litigating some of the country's most high-profile cases. Under his leadership, the firm has expanded to more than 65 attorneys across seven states and won more than $1 billion in verdicts, judgments, and settlements. Burg has represented thousands of individuals in dangerous drug mass tort cases including Fen-Phen, Yaz/Yasmin, Ortho Evra, and Pradaxa. He has fought against UBS for selling risky mortgages to investors and filed a sweeping action against 28 California wineries over arsenic-contaminated wine. In 2024, he secured a $55.5 million verdict for a client catastrophically injured by an exploding Sunbeam multi-cooker. In 2019, he obtained a $58.5 million verdict for families whose donated loved ones' bodies were illegally sold by the Biological Resource Center. Burg is a member of the Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska bars and is an inductee into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame, a recipient of the Clarence Darrow Award, and was inducted into the 2019 US Legal 500 Hall of Fame for Product Liability, Mass Tort and Class Action.
Notable case results
A federal jury awarded Georgina Perez $55.5 million after a Sunbeam Express Crock Multi-Cooker lid blew off and caused severe burns; the court later reduced the award to roughly $9.1 million under Colorado's statutory damages cap.
A Denver jury awarded $31.8 million to the family of an 82-year-old woman killed and other residents injured when a punctured Xcel Energy gas line exploded at Heather Gardens retirement community in 2018, assigning Xcel 12% of the fault.
Biological Resource Center body-parts fraud (2019)
Sunbeam multi-cooker product defect (2024)
Personal Injury
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
