Melissa Foster Bird is a partner in Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough’s West Virginia office. She has an extensive background in trying complex cases for railroads, trucking companies, chemical companies, and other manufacturers and retailers and convenience stores, in some of the most difficult venues in the nation.

Ms. Foster Bird’s practice is concentrated in workplace sexual harassment and retaliatory termination. She also has broad experience in railroad defense litigation, products liability, premises liability, professional malpractice, and toxic tort cases.

Examples of recent cases include:

• Defending a railroad employer in a matter wherein a plaintiff claimed the railroad negligently assigned him to work tasks knowing they were beyond his physical restrictions. The case, which was tried in a Federal Court, resulted in a defense verdict.
• Defending an oil and gas company in a matter in which a plaintiff alleged sexual harassment and retaliatory discharge. The plaintiff also alleged emotional distress, libel, slander, and defamation. The northern West Virginia jury found for the Defendant and awarded the Plaintiff no damages.
• Defending an employer in a matter in which a plaintiff claimed that he sustained a disabling back injury during the course of his heavy industrial work. The plaintiff also alleged that the tools and methods provided by his employer created a unsafe work environment. The defendant received a favorable verdict in this Federal Court matter.
• In a Mingo County, West Virginia case, a plaintiff alleged that he sustained cumulative trauma injuries during his work with defendant, a railroad company, due to the unsafe manner in which he was asked to perform his job. The jury found for the railroad by finding no negligence.

She is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of West Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court, and in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.

She has been published in the areas of privacy and media law and has taught seminars in the areas of effective motion practice, expert witness direct and cross examination, trial practice and tactics, and scientific research concerning cumulative trauma disorders. She serves on the faculty of the litigation trial school sponsored by the National Association of Railroad Trial Counsel. She is a member of Defense Research Institute, the National Association of Railroad Trial Counsel, and the Defense Trial Counsel of West Virginia. She is a Fellow in the Litigation Counsel of America. She has been selected for inclusion in the U.K-based legal directories Chambers USA 2011 and the 2011 U.S. edition of The Legal 500 for her litigation practice.

Ms. Foster Bird has served the community as a volunteer for the Huntington Museum of Art Capital Campaign, the United Way of the River Cities, the State Scholars Initiative, and the West Virginia Civil Liberties Union. She has been actively involved in Andrew’s Buddies/FightSMA, an organization that raises funds for research in the area of Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

A native of Southern Ohio, Ms. Foster Bird earned her Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University in 1994. She earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1990.