Weitz & Luxenberg Welcomes Frank M. Ortiz; to investigate mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis cases

Weitz & Luxenberg P.C., known for achieving landmark verdicts and settlements in asbestos suits, is pleased to announce that lawyer Frank M. Ortiz has joined the firm as a member of its Asbestos Litigation Unit.

“Weitz & Luxenberg has an outstanding reputation as one of the country’s premiere asbestos litigation firms,” said Mr. Ortiz. “This will surely be the perfect extension of the work I have done in the past that I have been most proud of, which centered on helping clients whose lives were upended by the diseases they sustained from exposure to asbestos.”

A former prosecutor for the New York County District Attorneys’ Violent Predator Task Force, Mr. Ortiz’s private trial practice has focused on cases involving asbestos, toxic torts, products liability and drug litigation.

Mr. Ortiz has successfully tried cases that have resulted in several multi-million dollar verdicts. Two of those cases involved the New York State Brooklyn Navy Yard Consolidation and the New York State Powerhouse Consolidation. Both were cited in the National Law Journal’s Largest Verdicts list as the largest asbestos consolidations ever brought to trial at the time those cases were adjudicated. As fate would have it, Weitz & Luxenberg founder Perry Weitz and lead attorneys Robert Gordon and Jerry Kristal tried those cases alongside Ortiz, who didn’t know at the time he would eventually work with them in the same legal practice.

Weitz & Luxenberg will afford Mr. Ortiz with the continued opportunity to prosecute those who have imperiled the public with the carcinogen asbestos. In May 2007, the firm obtained a jury verdict of $37 million for two smokers with lung cancer who had been exposed to asbestos (index #s 100016/99 and 113583/05, New York Supreme Court). The defendant was Robert A. Keasbey Company, a former insulation contractor and distributor of asbestos products. In 2006, the firm secured a $25 million jury verdict in a trial against DaimlerChrysler AG for a New York City brake reliner who lost his right lung to mesothelioma.

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