About Michele Leissle
Michele R.F. Leissle is a Workers' Compensation Attorney at Farah & Farah's Melbourne, Florida office, with more than 30 years of legal experience. She represents injured workers across Florida and is known for her empathetic, client-centered approach.
Leissle spent the bulk of her career at large corporate firms before joining Farah & Farah to focus on workers' compensation matters. Senior partner Chuck Farah has praised her as bringing 'extensive knowledge and a kind soul' to the work, with a particular focus on workers seeking equal pay or other compensation due to them.
Leissle earned her B.S. in Business from the State University of New York at Buffalo and her J.D. from Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center. She is admitted to The Florida Bar (#664250) and is a member of the Palm Beach County Bar Association Workers' Compensation Committee.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Farah & Farah
These results are credited to Farah & Farah. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A federal jury in Jacksonville found for Judith Berger, a forty-year smoker with end-stage COPD, on all claims against Philip Morris USA in September 2014. It awarded $6,250,000 in compensatory damages and $20,760,000.14 in punitive damages. The trial court set aside the fraud claims and the punitive award, but the Eleventh Circuit reinstated them in 2018 and held in 2021 that the punitive award was not unconstitutionally excessive.
A federal jury in Jacksonville found that cigarettes made by R.J. Reynolds were a legal cause of a Florida man's death from lung cancer in 1996. It awarded his widow $5.9 million in compensatory damages and assigned 27.5 percent of the fault to him, which produced a judgment of $4,277,500. In October 2014 the Eleventh Circuit reversed over the exclusion of evidence of his alcohol use and remanded for a new trial, and the case settled on undisclosed terms in January 2015 before any retrial.
A Duval County jury returned a $1.83 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in the wrongful-death claim of Kenneth Hiott, a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer; the trial court reduced the award to $730,000 based on comparative fault, and Florida's First District Court of Appeal affirmed in January 2014.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
