Donna Marie Melby

Melby is one of the nation’s top trial lawyers focused on employment law.

Over the last several years, she wrapped up one of her most unusual matters, an interlocking set of 23 race discrimination matters on behalf of a single client. Although they began as one case in 2012 in San Francisco, she had the matters split and scattered among seven different federal courts, where she got rid of them all by summary judgment or voluntary dismissal, she said.

“They all were resolved pretrial and without the payment of any monetary compensation with the exception perhaps of one.”

Although it is not an employment matter, Melby currently is litigating another cross-country federal lawsuit. She is defending a major pork producer in the South from claims by hundreds of residential property owners accusing her client’s hog farm and feeding operation of nuisance and trespass.

“I’m a trial lawyer. I can pretty much try anything, but my specialty is employment law,” she said.

She has spent much of the past year representing the CEO of a bank in an equal pay act and whistleblower retaliation case brought by the bank’s chief financial officer. Melby resolved that case in early June with a confidential settlement.

She predicts she could go to trial this year in a race discrimination and retaliation case in San Francisco. Although she preferred not to name her client, she will be defending it against three law firms from three states, one of which includes Benjamin Crump, the attorney for George Floyd’s family.

Despite all her litigation success, Melby says the highlight of her career recently was her pro bono work for the National Association of Women Judges. She raised $250,000 to help the association put on its annual meeting in Los Angeles in October 2019. “It was wonderful to be a part of it,” she said.

That she was able to raise so much money speaks to the high regard in which local and national bar groups and bar leaders hold her. “I’m proud to say that they really stepped up,” she said.

Last year, the women judges group gave Melby its top award for non-judges who have advanced opportunities for women in the legal profession.

In the past, Melby has served as the president of the American Board of Trial Advocates, as a member of the state Judicial Council, on the board of the National Center for State Courts and in posts with the American College of Trial Lawyers and even the Conference of Chief Judges.

“I would say that, looking back over my career, … [it] has always been intertwined with supporting the civil justice system and the bench and the bar,” Melby said.

— Don DeBenedictis