When Russ Melton says he'll return your phone call at a certain time barring something blowing up, burning down or collapsing, he's not kidding. A partner and catastrophic-loss team leader at Meagher & Geer, he knows his way around explosions.
After a seven-year stint in the 1960s as a Navy engineer on a nuclear submarine, Melton found work building computers and working with metals and die casting. During that time he saw that the companies he worked for all had lawyers to represent them and started taking classes at William Mitchell. "It looks like I planned it if you look at my résumé-14 years of school by day, work by night; or work by day and school by night," he says.
He graduated and made his way to Meagher & Geer.
"I love my job," says Melton. "It's pretty much a job I designed. How could I not love it?" His list of qualifications is a long one, including nuclear engineering, metallurgical engineering and certification in propane and Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Responses (HAZWOPER). "Even my executive assistant is certified in propane and HAZWOPER," says Melton.
Melton likes being proactive. "Do you wait for a case before you learn what it's about, or do you seek out the training because the work comes to you?" Melton is clearly in the latter category. But then again, it would be hard not to get excited about learning when it involves spending months staging explosions and fires (with donated houses, boats, etc.) in order to gather data for current and future catastrophic-loss cases.
The catastrophic-loss lawyers at Meagher & Geer are good at cross-examining witnesses in the courtroom and gathering evidence in an "exclusionary zone"-the part of an accident scene where only police and other emergency response professionals may enter. It's critical to find every piece of evidence immediately, because some cases last for years. "You can't go back [to get more evidence] after that amount of time," says Melton.
He has seen more than his fair share of explosions, fires and collapsed buildings. But with every calamity, there is the opportunity to learn-and to help his clients. "We're litigators, yes," Melton says. "But more importantly we're problem solvers."
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