Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger was founded over 50 years ago and is among California's premier contingent fee tort firms. All firm members eligible for rating carry the highest legal ability rating in Martindale-Hubbell. The firm's attorneys are active in national and international honor societies to which trial lawyers are admitted only by election or invitation.
Firm attorneys have attained a national reputation for ethical and aggressive representation of clients in complex personal injury and death cases and have obtained seven and eight figure verdicts in a wide variety of tort claims. Areas of specialty include truck and vehicle collisions, drug and device failures, consumer product defect, insurance bad faith, aviation crashes, work site accidents, premises liability, and medical negligence.
The firm has been active at the national level in mass tort litigation involving birth control devices, prescription drugs, nutritional supplements, breast implants, Fen-Phen, L-Tryptophan, Rezulin, Baycol, Sulzer Hip Implants, DePuy Knee implants, Ob-Tape, Lens Crafters, Heparin and automobile crashworthiness issues involving passenger restraint, roof crush and airbag deployment.
Members of the firm serve as officers and board members of such organizations as the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, the International Society of Barristers, the American Board of Trial Advocates, the American Inns of Court, and the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association. They have been selected for inclusion among The Best Lawyers in America and the Northern California Super Lawyers. Members of the firm serve as law school faculty at such institutions as U.C. Hastings College of Law, Emory University's prestigious Kessler-Eidson Trial Techniques program and the University of San Francisco's Intensive Advocacy Program.
One of our lawyers is the co-author of the most widely used text in the field of personal injury in California. Other firm members have lectured written papers, authored by graphs and presented clinic instruction in the fields of product liability, evidence, damages, medical malpractice, government liability and public transportation safety. For 22 years one of our partners has lectured statewide for the Continuing Education of the Bar on recent developments in torts. One of our partners was selected by the California Judicial Council to participate in the state's redrafting of its civil jury instructions.
Our Attorney serve on local bar committees volunteer as settlement conference judges in local superior courts and provide pro bono services throughout the Bay Area. To assist in the prosecution of its medical device and medical negligence claims, the firm's practice is supplemented by one full time and one part-time M.D./J.D. The firm currently has cases pending in California, Utah, New Mexico and Hawaii and has prosecuted claims pro hac vice in Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, Idaho, New York, Washington, and the Territory of Guam.
