Craig McClellan
About Craig McClellan
Craig McClellan founded the firm that bears his name after leaving Luce, Forward, Hamilton and Scripps, where he was a partner from 1976 to 1986. He served as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps before beginning his legal career. Over more than four decades of practice, Craig has obtained more than 150 verdicts and settlements in excess of one million dollars each, including a $31.5 million verdict in McCormack v. The Rock Church, a $28.1 million personal injury judgment against the State of California, and a $25.3 million product defect and negligence recovery. He is the first and only personal injury attorney in San Diego admitted to the Inner Circle of Advocates, an invitation-only group limited to 100 plaintiff attorneys nationwide. Craig has been named a Super Lawyers Number One attorney in San Diego, earned a Lawyer of the Year designation for Personal Injury and Product Liability five times from Best Lawyers, and received the Outstanding Trial Lawyer Award from the Consumer Attorneys of San Diego three times. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, a Master of the American Inns of Court (William B. Enright Chapter, President 2018-2020), and a Board of Directors member of California Western School of Law. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and the McNeil-Lehrer Report, and one of his cases is featured in the Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith book No Contest.
Notable case results
A Tulare County jury awarded $28,163,528 after finding Caltrans 90% liable for a 13-year-old's catastrophic injuries at a 60 mph, five-lane crosswalk the agency had known was dangerous for two decades.
A San Diego jury awarded $15,771,234 to the wife and three children of a bicyclist killed on El Camino Real in Carlsbad by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel after a night shift, in what was reported as the largest net wrongful death verdict in San Diego County history.
A San Diego jury found the Porsche Turbo 930 defective not from a single mechanical failure but because the car's power and handling characteristics made it inherently too dangerous for ordinary drivers, awarding $2.5 million to the family of Donald Fresh in what was the first U.S. verdict of its kind against an automaker.
McCormack v. The Rock Church et al.
Personal injury case against the State of California
Product defect and negligence
Amy Ringdahl et al. v. Alvarado Hospital Medical Center
Pacific Landmark v. San Diego Unified Port District
Acosta v. Industrial Asphalt
Miller v. Ford Motor Co.
Garrison v. Porsche
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
