Ralph Dewsnup

The former president and a founding member of DKOW, Ralph L. Dewsnup is among Utah’s most experienced and respected attorneys, especially in the area of complex personal injury litigation. He has been directly involved in the negotiation and/or trial of hundreds of personal injury cases involving medical malpractice, automobile accidents, and defective products. Mr. Dewsnup also has played a major role in developing and improving the quality of procedures and practices critical to fair, responsible complex injury litigation in Utah. He has chaired the Prelitigation Task Force of the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing for the State of Utah, which helped to develop medical malpractice prelitigation procedures.

He also chaired the subcommittee for drafting the first set of medical malpractice pattern jury instructions for Utah and was a member of the Utah Judicial Council’s committee that drafted a second edition of Model Utah Jury Instructions. He also served as a member of the Utah Judicial Council’s Committee to Improve Jury Service that recommended changes to Utah’s jury selection and service system. A federal court-approved mediator and arbitrator for Utah, he has been a senior lecturer and adjunct professor of law, teaching medical malpractice law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. He is admitted to practice before all Utah courts, both federal and state, and has also been admitted to practice before the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court.

He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the American Inns of Court Foundation, a national legal organization that promotes excellence, professionalism, civility and ethics, with a nationwide membership exceeding 25,000 attorneys, judges, and others involved in the legal profession. He is a member of the Utah State Bar, the Salt Lake County Bar Association, the Utah Association for Justice (UAJ), and the American Inns of Court, having served as President of UAJ and of the Aldon J. Anderson American Inn of Court (VII). He is the recipient of the Utah Association for Justice’s Outstanding Achievement Award and the A. Sherman Christensen Award of the American Inns of Court Foundation (presented in the Supreme Court of the United States), has been selected by his peers for listing in The Best Lawyers in America, and has been listed among Mountain States Super Lawyers and Salt Lake Magazine’s Top Attorneys in the Mountain States. He has also been inducted as a Life Fellow in the American Bar Foundation.

Community service has complemented his dedication to his professional work. He is an Area Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A board trustee for the Utah National Guard Charitable Trust, Mr. Dewsnup served for nearly four decades as a Guard member, retiring with the rank of Brigadier General (USAF). He has received numerous military awards and decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal.