Similar personal injury attorneys in San Francisco
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
About Douglas Saeltzer
Douglas S. Saeltzer is a Shareholder at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger (Walkup Personal Injury Lawyers) in San Francisco. He has represented seriously injured clients at the firm since 1998 and has obtained more than $75 million in jury verdicts and settlements for the firm's clients.
Saeltzer specializes in large personal injury cases involving defective products, construction-related accidents, nursing home abuse and neglect, medical malpractice, brain injuries, wrongful death, and other catastrophic causes. He has successfully argued cases at the California Court of Appeal and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and one of his cases established law ensuring that all injured workers are entitled to full recovery for their lost wages.
Before joining Walkup, Saeltzer began his legal career as a prosecutor in the United States Army. He attended the U.S. Army Airborne School and was selected for the 82nd Airborne Division, where he prosecuted criminal cases, and was honorably discharged at the rank of Captain with a Meritorious Service Medal.
He earned his Juris Doctor from UC Hastings College of the Law (now UC Law San Francisco), where he served on the Constitutional Law Quarterly. For the past 20 years, he has been an assistant professor at UC Law San Francisco, teaching an upper-level course called Practical Civil Litigation.
Saeltzer is the President-Elect of Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC) and will assume the presidency in 2026. He has been continuously selected as a Northern California Super Lawyer since 2010, was elected to membership in the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) in 2010, and has been voted to Best Lawyers in America since 2011.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Walkup Personal Injury Lawyers
These results are credited to Walkup Personal Injury Lawyers. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A Dallas federal jury awarded $1.04 billion to six California patients harmed by Johnson and Johnson's metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implants, with W. Mark Lanier leading an eight-week trial that produced one of the largest product-liability verdicts of 2016.
Walkup shareholder Michael A. Kelly served on the plaintiffs' leadership team that secured a $117 million settlement from former PG&E officers and directors over wildfires that ranked among the deadliest in California history.
Conor Kelly and Melinda Derish proved that a Bakersfield hospitalist never examined Kody Myrick or ordered a neurology consult, letting a treatable basilar-artery stroke destroy his brain stem, and a San Francisco jury fixed his damages at $38.6 million.
An Orange County jury found Yamaha's YXZ1000R side-by-side defectively designed and awarded $26.3 million to Justin Van Tussenbrook, a Utah man paralyzed when the vehicle's rollover protection structure collapsed at low speed.
A Kandiyohi County jury awarded $23.2 million on February 9, 2010, to a Paynesville family whose daughter was born without breathing after a labor induction and a delayed cesarean at Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar. She has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, seizures and cortical impairment. The jury put 80 percent of the fault on Affiliated Community Medical Centers and 20 percent on the hospital. It was described at the time as the largest medical malpractice award in Minnesota state history.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.









