James C. Peterson graduated from William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota in 1976. Since graduation, he has been involved in a variety of legal pursuits, including acting as a law clerk for a Minnesota state trial court judge, serving as chief corporate counsel for a worldwide non-profit organization, and for the past twenty years, concentrating his efforts in litigating severe personal injury, medical

Representative cases settled and/or tried to jury verdict include multi-million dollar medical and legal malpractice cases, recoveries in excess of $1 million in product liability cases, numerous million dollar verdicts and/or settlements involving serious motor vehicle accidents, as well as serving as co-lead counsel on the settlement of the largest pharmaceutical class action litigation in the history of the state of West Virginia, involving the diet drug fen-phen.

In recent years, Mr. Peterson has devoted the majority of his time to major medical malpractice and mass tort/class action litigation. Representative mass tort/class action litigation includes Burch, et al. v. American Home Products Corporation, et al., (Fen-Phen diet drug); Deitzler, et al. v. Bridgestone-Firestone, Inc., et al. (tire tread separation/rollover); Martin, et al. v. Allstate Insurance Company (nationwide insurance fraud); Sprouse, et al. v. Johnson & Johnson Corporation, et al., (Propulsid acid reflux medication); (Baycol, a cholesterol lowering drug); McCaffery, et al. v. Warner Lambert Company, et al. (Rezulin - type II diabetes drug); McCallister, et al. v. Purdue-Pharma, Inc., et al. (Oxycontin - potent pain killer drug); and most recently Community Health Ass'n., et al. v. Lucent Technologies, Inc., et al. (a certified nationwide class action involving allegedly defective telecommunications products).

Mr. Peterson has been board-certified as a civil trial specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) since 1990. He has served in a variety of positions with both state and national trial lawyer organizations, including president of the West Virginia Trial Lawyers' Association (1996-1997). He is presently certified to practice in the states of Minnesota, Ohio, and West Virginia, and has been admitted pro hac vice in over a dozen other jurisdictions. While serving as chief corporate counsel for an international non-profit organization in the late 1970's, Mr. Peterson argued cases before several foreign jurisdictions.

Since 1987, Mr. Peterson has presented over 40 papers and articles nationwide on various legal topics in over two dozen states. Other legal publications include a chapter in a book published by the National Brain Injury Association involving hedonic damages; an article on the same topic appearing in the monthly publication Trial for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (American Association for Justice), and a law review article entitled "Trial Techniques – Selecting and Using Expert Witnesses in Bad Faith Cases," 19 Am. Jour. Trial Adv., 543, (Spring 1996), Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.

Mr. Peterson is recognized as a life member of American Association for Justice, an honor bestowed on approximately 50 lawyers out of a nationwide trial organization consisting of over 50,000 members.

Mr. Peterson presently lives in Charleston, West Virginia. Mr. Peterson is an avid runner, golfer, and wine enthusiast, and together with law partner Mike Bee, developed a winery in Napa, California by the name of Falcor Wine Cellars in 1996.

HOME