By: Eva Segerblom, Esq.

Ozzie Fumo is a first-generation American and, although he was born in Virginia, he has been a resident of Nevada for four decades. He graduated from Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas before attending the University of San Diego for his undergraduate degree, and obtained his law degree from Whittier Law School. He was first elected to the Nevada Assembly in November 2016 and his first session was in 2017. He is the Vice Chair of Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections, and also currently serves on the Judiciary and Natural Resources, Agriculture and Mining Committees.

Assemblyman Fumo is a partner at Pitaro & Fumo, where he has specialized in criminal defense for more than 20 years. He was one of the lawyers on O.J. Simpson’s defense team during the former football player’s latest appeal of his 2008 kidnapping and armed robbery conviction. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the UNLV Boyd School of Law.
He is a member of the American Bar Association, Nevada Justice Association, Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice, National Italian American Bar Association, Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He received the Nevada State Bar’s Outstanding Service Award in 2006 and was named among the American Society of Legal Advocates Top 100 Criminal Defense Lawyers in 2015.

Some of the important legislation that Assemblyman Fumo is sponsoring in the 2019 session includes AB153, also known as Brooklynn’s Law. Brooklynn’s Law seeks to make it a crime to negligently store or leave a firearm that a person knows or has reason to know that there is a substantial risk that a child, who is otherwise prohibited from handling, possessing or controlling a firearm, may obtain such a firearm. In the 2017 session, he helped our organization sponsor and pass Harvey’s Law, which requires CPR training for all paratransit bus drivers.

Assemblyman Fumo has devoted his life to fighting for justice for all and pro-tecting the Seventh Amendment. No quote could better sum up Assemblyman Fumo’s driving mission than this one from the Assemblyman himself: “Early on I learned about bullies, how sometimes they’re people, sometimes they’re corpo-rations, and sometimes they’re even the government. That’s why I do the work I do, because I believe everyone deserves a defense and everyone should be treated fairly under the law.” Our Consumer Advocate of the Year award for 2019 could not be more deserved and we are proud to present Assemblyman Fumo with this award.