FIRM BIO
Keller, Fishback & Jackson LLP is a full service litigation firm whose lawyers share years of experience in a wide range of practice areas. We have represented a variety of clients, from individual plaintiffs to Fortune 500 companies, in litigation ranging from simple negligence to criminal defense. Through our knowledge, experience and collaboration we formulate innovative legal solutions to meet all of our clients' legal needs.
ATTORNEY BIOS
Stephen M. Fishback
Position:
Partner
Office:
Los Angeles
Address:
28720 Canwood Street, Suite 200 Agoura Hills, California 91301
Telephone:
(818) 342-7442
Facsimile:
(818) 342-7616
Email:
Stephen Fishback is an experienced civil trial attorney who has successfully represented numerous workers and their families in state and federal courts. Recognized as one of California’s leading attorneys representing injured individuals and their families, he focuses his practice on asbestos litigation, toxic torts, all types of personal and catastrophic injuries, products liability, and entertainment law.
Mr. Fishback began his legal career in Sacramento working for law firms representing people who were personally and catastrophically injured. After relocating to the Oakland Bay Area and joining a nationally-acclaimed plaintiff law firm, he gained expertise in asbestos, toxic tort, and tobacco/cigarette litigation as trial counsel for workers and their families suffering from respiratory diseases, mesothelioma and other cancers, and premature death from harmful exposures to toxic substances in hundreds of cases. Mr. Fishback brought his considerable skills and experience to the East Bay in 2002 where he continued his trial practice specializing in asbestos and other toxic tort cases. He also was responsible for the administration of over thirty associate attorneys and successfully managed a large staff of paralegals and secretarial personnel.
Mr. Fishback is admitted to the California Bar and is also licensed to practice in all California federal district courts. He has served as lead counsel in various jurisdictions throughout California, as well as Oregon and Washington. As trial counsel, he has secured multi-million dollar verdicts for injured people and their loved ones who were harmed by dangerous and defective products, and the negligent misconduct of multi-national companies such as Exxon Corporation, Owens-Illinois, Inc., and Calaveras Asbestos Ltd. He has argued appeals before California Courts of Appeal and has appeared in Federal Court on complex civil litigation matters. Mr. Fishback has also served as a settlement negotiator, and has assisted the courts in successfully managing their asbestos and personal injury dockets.
Mr. Fishback previously served on the Board of Governors for the Consumer Attorneys of California and was a sectional vice-president for the American Bar Association, Tort and Insurance Practice Section; he is currently an active member of both organizations. He is also a member of the American Trial Lawyers Association, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, American Bar Association, and various other local community and legal organizations.
Mr. Fishback graduated with honors from St. Mary’s College of California in 1994 where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Integral Studies. He earned his Juris Doctor degree and Certificate in Governmental Affairs from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, in 1997. In 2000, Mr. Fishback successfully earned a Certificate of Achievement for completing the curriculum at the American Bar Association’s National Trial Academy. Mr. Fishback currently lives and was born in Southern California, but has spent most of his life in and around the Oakland Bay Area. He has also lived in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.
J. Bruce Jackson
Position:
Partner
Office:
Oakland
Telephone:
(510) 844-5500
Facsimile:
(510) 496-5999
Email:
J. Bruce Jackson’s practice focuses on asbestos litigation, criminal defense, personal and catastrophic injuries, and products liability.
Of his countless trial victories, most notable is his 10.35 million dollar jury verdict on behalf of Christine Perez, a 77-year-old housewife from Hayward, California, who was suffering from mesothelioma. Mrs. Perez was exposed to asbestos while serving as a pipe hanger during World War II at the Moore Dry Dock shipyard in Oakland, and from washing the clothing of her husband, a former commercial plumber with Local 342 in Concord, California. At the time, the Perez verdict against asbestos giant Owens-Illinois, Inc. was the highest amount of compensatory damages ever awarded by a jury in California for a victim of asbestos disease.
Mr. Jackson also obtained a trial victory on behalf of George Smith, an 81-year-old pipefitter suffering from asbestos-related lung cancer. A Oakland jury, by unanimous verdict, awarded $4.3 million to Mr. and Mrs. Smith against Mobil Oil Corporation based on Mr. Smith’s exposure to asbestos while working as a pipefitter at the Mobil Oil Refinery in Torrance, California in 1966.
Bruce Jackson is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley and McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California. After working for the District Attorney’s office, he developed his asbestos litigation practice working with notable plaintiffs’ firms in Northern California where he tried dozens of cases on behalf of asbestos victims suffering from mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis. He has grossed over $20 million dollars in trial verdicts against asbestos companies, including rare jury verdicts against gasket manufacturer Flexitallic, Inc. and brake manufacturer Allied Signal, Inc. In addition to his accomplished trial work, Mr. Jackson divides his time with the firm by representing clients at depositions, discovery, and law and motion proceedings, and by taking an active role in training junior associates.
Bruce is a member of the Oakland Trial Lawyers Association and the California Bar Association.
Daniel L. Keller
Position:
Partner
Office:
Los Angeles
Address:
28720 Canwood Street, Suite 200 Agoura Hills, California 91301
Telephone:
(818) 342-7442
Facsimile:
(818) 342-7616
Email:
Daniel Keller focuses his practice on construction defect, real estate law and litigation, environmental law, personal injury, products liability and class action litigation. He is admitted in California, New York and New Jersey, and has represented clients in these and other jurisdictions. Mr. Keller has extensive experience litigating personal injury and mass tort cases including drug litigation, real property and environmental disputes, and premises liability, toxic torts and catastrophic injury cases in both state and federal courts yielding millions of dollars in compensation for his clients.
Mr. Keller worked for many years for a large, international law firm in Oakland and New York. During that time he represented several multi-national corporations in commercial and product liability litigation. He has represented both contractors and home builders in an around California in construction defect disputes, business litigation and transactional matters. Mr. Keller has also represented numerous energy, manufacturing, construction and real estate clients in environmental and toxic tort litigation, and regulatory matters. His experience includes representing clients in both state and federal courts in CERCLA, RCRA, CWA, ESA, CAA, OPA and Proposition 65 litigation. He has also represented clients in environmental disputes negotiating with and appearing before state and regional agencies.
Mr. Keller’s environmental law experience stems from his work as a biological technician at the California Department of Fish and Game, and S.P. Cramer, a private consulting company, as well as his work in international environmental compliance at Tegee Chemical Company in Bremen, Germany. Mr. Keller also served as a volunteer attorney at the U.S. EPA in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Keller has authored “Polluting Tenants: Protecting Yourself As A Property Owner,” PME Quarterly (January 1999) and also authored for the Law Review, Pacific Law Journal, Volume 27 (1995). Mr. Keller presented before the Gatersleben Institute of Plant Genetics and Taxonomy (June 25, 1993) on his taxonomical research. He has also presented a seminar on Mechanics’ Liens” before the Building Industry Association of the Delta (November 1998).
Mr. Keller earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of the Pacific (B.A., 1990; M.S., 1994); his graduate degree in Biological Sciences focused on Botany. He earned his law degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law (J.D., 1997) with distinction. Mr. Keller also attended George Washington University Law School where he completed course work on an LL.M. degree in Environmental Law.
Dan C. Bolton
Position:
Of Counsel
Office:
Los Angeles
Address:
28720 Canwood Street, Suite 200
Agoura Hills, California 91301
Telephone:
(818) 342-7442
Facsimile:
(818) 342-7616
Email:
Dan C. Bolton oversees the pharmaceutical and medical device litigation practice. He has thirty years of experience in individual, class, multi-district, coordinated and mass tort actions in state and federal courts throughout the country. Mr. Bolton began his mass tort practice on behalf of women injured by the Dalkon Shield IUD and the miscarriage preventative, DES.
Mr. Bolton played a pivotal role in the birth of failure to warn liability for pharmaceutical manufacturers in California. He was appellate counsel in Brown v. Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1049, the seminal California Supreme Court decision holding manufacturers strictly liable for the failure to warn of known or scientifically knowable dangers. More than two decades later, the landmark decision in Brown is frequently cited, and serves as a guide for any lawyer litigating a failure to warn case.
Mr. Bolton’s keen understanding of, and creative approach to, pharmaceutical litigation has led him to represent plaintiffs throughout the country in a variety of mass tort actions. The American Lawyer magazine recognized him as the “Dean of silicone breast implant cases,” after he pioneered the breast implant litigation and obtained a $7.3M verdict against Dow Corning Corporation in 1991, the largest personal injury verdict that year in California federal court and the largest breast implant verdict at the time.
After his success at trial, he resolved over 100 cases, with many seven-figure settlements, and in addition served on the federal MDL Steering Committee that negotiated a $4.2B settlement against the breast implant manufacturers. That the defendants took him seriously, and understood his level of preparation, was demonstrated in the Fen-Phen litigation, which followed breast implants. In the Fen-Phen litigation, the defense never took Mr. Bolton to trial, and his average settlement was $2.2M per case.
Mr. Bolton has appeared on Nightline with Barbara Walters, Primetime Live with Chris Wallace, MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio and The Phil Donahue Show. He has been profiled and interviewed by print media, including Newsweek, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Mr. Bolton was even the subject of an editorial in The Wall Street Journal critical of his success on behalf of plaintiffs.
Mr. Bolton has also been featured in books, including Joseph C. Goulden, The Money Lawyers – The No-Holds-Barred World of Today’s Richest and Most Powerful 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 a made for television movie, Two Voices (fictionalized character) Lifetime Cable Movie 1997.
Mr. Bolton received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley (B.A. 1978) and law degree from Hastings College of the Law (J.D. 1982).