Herbert Hafif

Office of Herbert Hafif

Specialty: Business litigation

Law School: USC, 1956

At the end of the 1970s, Herbert Hafif (pronounced like “half”) had won 13 percent of all of the multimillion-dollar jury awards in U.S. history. At the end of the 1980s, Forbes estimated that he was the second-wealthiest lawyer in America, with a $40 million annual income.

He is still racking up big wins, including a 1995 judgment for $45 million against California Federal for Weyerhaeuser Mortgage Co. in a loan repayment case (his son Greg, who works for him, won a $15 million antitrust verdict at the same time, putting both in the top 10 winners for the state that year).

His largest victory was $141 million in punitive damages and $500 million in stock for ComputerLand investors in a shareholders suit against the company.

Hafif, 69, says he gives away half his money each year to various charities because “no one should make so much litigating.” Ironically, he says, “I went into law as a way to go broke helping the little guy.” He thanks God for “making me rich enough to have to worry about the excess.”

An entrepreneur from the time he ran away from home at 14, he had made his first million by the time he graduated from law school and initially concentrated on running businesses, eventually founding 13 companies with a total of 3,000 employees. But he wasn’t happy.

One night over drinks, singer Ray Charles told him, “You ought to just do what you enjoy, which is try cases.”

Hafif gradually sold his companies to work full-time in the courtroom, though he recently bought a small bank that provides loans to those with low incomes.

A populist activist, he ran for governor in 1974, was national co-chairman for Jimmy Carter’s 1976 primary campaign, and made the largest single campaign donation in California history ($200,000 to John Garamendi for his 1994 gubernatorial primary bid). Lately, he has been outspoken about judicial rulings on product liability and bad faith issues.

Scott Smith