George Sampson is Of Counsel to Pritzker Levine LLP. He is also a founding partner of Sampson Dunlap LLP. Prior to forming Sampson Dunlap, he worked for 20 years at Hagens Berman in Seattle. While at HB he focused on antitrust class actions, and served as co-lead trial counsel in the Disposable Contact Lens Litigation and the Visa/MasterCard debit card cases. George also played a lead role in winning the first contested class certification ruling in a vertical price fixing case. As a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of West Virginia, Sampson won a $16.2 million settlement against Visa and MasterCard which funded several sales tax holidays for West Virginia consumers.
Sampson’s principal experience has been to assist expert witnesses in antitrust cases. He has either taken or defended the deposition of nearly every leading antitrust economist, whether at the class certification stage or the liability and damages phases of complex antitrust class actions. He is conversant with complex economic analyses, econometric damages models, and equally important, translating expert economic analysis into language judges and juries can readily grasp.
Prior to joining Hagens Berman, Sampson served as chief of the Antitrust Bureau for the New York Attorney General’s Office. Mr. Sampson oversaw a 22-person staff and managed case selection and investigation for all civil and criminal prosecutions. He also served as attorney general liaison to the federal-state Executive Working Group-Antitrust. His position as chief involved a heavy trial practice, primarily in federal courts and often in conjunction with several states.
During his 10 years with the Antitrust Bureau, Sampson’s notable cases included winning a $7.8 million jury verdict in a highway bid rigging trial, serving as lead counsel for New York and obtaining a $30 million settlement in insurance antitrust litigation and negotiating a $15 million return to consumers in a resale price maintenance settlement with Nintendo.
Sampson earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Cornell University and graduated from New York University School of Law in 1977. Mr. Sampson is admitted before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeal.
