Dan Bolton—a plaintiff’s lawyer for thirty years in San Francisco, including twenty years managing his own firm—has fought for decades to ensure justice and fairness for his clients. He began his civil litigation work in mass torts on behalf of women injured by the Dalkon Shield IUD and the miscarriage preventative, DES. Other mass tort work includes the diet drug combination Fen-Phen, hip implants, transvaginal mesh and hernia mesh.
Mr. Bolton practices in the Rancho Mirage office and focuses on serious personal injury, wrongful death, and public interest litigation. He has forty-three years of experience in individual, class, multidistrict, coordinated, and mass tort actions, in state and federal courts throughout the country.
Mr. Bolton played a pivotal role in the birth of failure to warn liability in California for pharmaceutical manufacturers. He was appellate counsel in Brown v. Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1049, the California Supreme Court decision holding manufacturers strictly liable for the failure to warn of known or scientifically knowable dangers. Additional appellate cases before the California Supreme Court include Johnson & Johnson v. Superior Court (1985) 38 Cal. 3d 246 (clarifying service of process requirements for out of state defendant) and Estate of MacDonald (1990) 51 Cal.3d 265 (defining the “express declaration” necessary to effectuate a transmutation of real or personal property).
He pioneered the breast implant litigation and obtained a $7.3M verdict in Hopkins v. Dow Corning Corporation, the largest breast implant verdict at the time and the largest product liability verdict in the United States federal district courts in 1991. One month after the verdict, FDA Commissioner David Kesler, M.D. called for a moratorium on the distribution and sale of silicone breast implants because of insufficient safety data.
Mr. Bolton was co-appellate counsel in the Hopkins case before the United States Court of Appeal, Ninth Circuit, in which the judgment was affirmed, and the United States Supreme Court which denied certiorari (33 F.3d 1116 (9th Cir. 1994) cert. denied, 115 S.Ct 734 (1995)). He served on the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee in the federal multi-district litigation that negotiated a $4.2B settlement with the breast implant manufacturers and ultimately forced Dow Corning into bankruptcy.
Profiled and interviewed by print media, including Newsweek, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and California Lawyer. Recognized as the “Dean of silicone breast implant cases” by The American Lawyer, “From Pioneers to Profits,” July 1992. Mr. Bolton was the subject of an editorial in The Wall Street Journal critical of his success as a plaintiff’s attorney (“Science Abdicates,” January 9, 1992).
Featured in books, including Joseph C. Goulden, “The Money Lawyers” (St. Martin’s Press 2006), Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith, “No Contest (Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America)” (Random House 1996), John A. Byrne, “Informed Consent” (McGraw-Hill 1996), Marcia Angell, M.D., “Science on Trial” (W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.), and made for television movie, “Two Voices” (fictionalized character) Lifetime Cable Movie 1997.
Personal appearances on Nightline with Barbara Walters, Primetime Live with Chris Wallace, MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, The Phil Donahue Show and The Roggin Report.
AV Preeminent Rated by Martindale-Hubbell (highest level of professional excellence for legal expertise and ethical standards by peers).
1982, J.D. University of California College of the Law, San Francisco
1978, B.A. University of California, Berkeley
