August J Matteis, Jr.

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August J Matteis, Jr.

Augie Matteis, the Managing Partner of Weisbrod Matteis & Copley, litigates and tries high stakes cases across the country.

He represents corporate plaintiffs and defendants, public entities, whistleblowers, and hundreds of thousands of individuals in complex civil matters across a wide range of substantive practice areas, such as insurance coverage, breach of contract, fraud, False Claims Act, intellectual property, and environmental law. Augie has served as lead counsel in many significant victories for his clients.

Augie was lead trial counsel for the whistleblowers in United States ex rel. Rigsby v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co., No. 06-433 (S.D. Miss.), the first case in which a jury found that one of FEMA’s insurance companies intentionally defrauded the federal government. The case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and was affirmed 8-0 in favor of the whistleblowing Rigsby sisters. This led to a $100 million settlement, which was one of the largest False Claims Act settlements in history that did not involve the healthcare industry.
Augie was lead trial counsel in In re Outsidewall Tire Litigation, 09-cv-1217 (E.D.V.A.), a case in which he represented a U.S. inventor against two tire conglomerates in China and Dubai that stole the inventor’s intellectual property and business plans related to specialized underground mining tires. Just eight months after meeting the plaintiff, Augie and his team obtained a $26 million jury verdict against the two companies in the Eastern District of Virginia for copyright and trademark infringement, conversion and civil conspiracy. The verdict was the largest of the year in Virginia and one of the top 100 verdicts in the country. After the defendants refused to pay, WMC pursued them in enforcement actions around the world and collected over $23 million of the judgment.
Augie was lead counsel for the State of Mississippi in a series of lawsuits brought against insurance companies for committing systematic fraud and other illegal acts in the claims handling process after Hurricane Katrina. The cases resulted in tens of millions of dollars recovered for the state.

Augie represented a Holocaust survivor in a federal lawsuit brought against the Republic of Germany for refusing to return to their rightful owners over 1,400 original artworks that were stolen by Hitler’s art dealer and hidden away by his son, Cornelius Gurlitt, for over 70 years. As a result of WMC’s aggressive representation, WMC’s client was the first to recover from Gurlitt’s trove.

Augie currently serves as co-counsel with solicitors in the United Kingdom in several historically large international matters, including:

Representing over 600,000 municipalities, businesses, faith-based institutions, and individuals against international mining companies responsible for the collapse of the Fundão Dam, which may be the largest environmental disaster in Brazil’s history; and

Representing hundreds of thousands of individuals against auto manufacturers that illegally installed “defeat devices” to evade emissions laws in cars sold to plaintiffs in Europe.

Augie began private practice as a litigation associate at Skadden. While in law school, he clerked for The Honorable Harry T. Edwards, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Augie grew up in rural Connecticut and spent many summers working with his father, who was a master carpenter. His parents taught him to take pride in his work and not be intimidated by people just because they had more money or power. Those simple lessons have guided him throughout his life.

(703) 973-2700
[email protected]
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Education

L.L.M., Georgetown University, Labor and Employment, Chetwood Prize (highest average in graduating class) (2002)

J.D., Georgetown University, magna cum laude, Order of the Coif, John M. Olin Fellowship in Law & Economics (1993)

B.A., Yale University, cum laude (1989)

Bar Memberships

District of Columbia
Connecticut

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