Walter M Jones III

I am the Managing Shareholder at Martin & Seibert, L.C. I practice primarily in the area of civil litigation defense with an emphasis on insurance and class action defense.  I have  earned an AV® rating by Martindale-Hubbell.   I am a 1980 graduate of the West Virginia University College of Law.  My  early experience included time as an attorney assigned to U.S. Legal Services Agency [Department of the Army] where during my four years of service I developed extensive criminal trial experience and managed medical malpractice claims and litigation. As an individually requested legal defense counsel, I handled hundreds of trials with most involving serious felonies, conspiracies or actions under foreign S.O.F.A. jurisdiction. After my time at the Pentagon, I served as a legal advisor to a major medical center, where I provided risk management counsel and evaluated and settled medical malpractice claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act.  I joined the law firm of Martin & Seibert, L.C. in 1984 in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

I have litigated a number of noteworthy matters of first impression before both state and federal courts. I have been an expert witness on insurance extra-contractual claims, have served as lead counsel on insurance-related class actions and have consulted on regional and national class action cases. I have directed national class action discovery involving millions of records, and have often consulted with offices of general counsel on internal document management and control. I also serve as Discovery Coordinating Counsel and Consulting Technical Counsel for several national, multi-line insurance carriers. I have also actively litigated the production of discovery in a number of class actions and multi-jurisdiction actions.  This expertise reflects my firm’s mastery of cutting-edge technology, advancing document retrieval and storage, e-discovery and relational database management. The firm recently completed an e-discovery project utilizing Summation®, a litigation support program. The firm was recognized by Tom Rump, Vice President of Litigation Solutions for CT Summation where he stated that “Martin & Seibert’s result demonstrates a best-practice benchmark for large cases.”

            I am a frequent lecturer in the insurance industry, speaking predominantly on topics such as coverage, insurance claims practices (bad faith), claims management, catastrophic damage control, and class action litigation management. I have served as an Arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association and am also an active member of many highly-regarded legal affiliations such as the International Association of Defense Counsel, American Bar Association standing committees, Defense Research Institute, Commercial Law League of America and several other practice-oriented institutes, bars and associations.

            In the last several years I have been selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers–Rising Stars Edition 2007 and as a Super Lawyer again in 2008 and 2009.  This recognition is only available for the top 5% of the lawyers in the state. The attorneys and staff of Martin & Seibert, L.C. were honored as a “Go-To” law firm for the nation’s “Leading Financial Services Companies in 2007.” This special edition publication, distributed by ALM (formerly American Lawyer Media), the company that publishes Corporate Counsel magazine, also individually recognized my litigation experience in the defense of commercial, extra-contractual and class actions.  The firm was again recognized again in 2008 and 2009 as a “Go-To” law firm in the publication, “At the Top 500 Companies.”  My firm was most recently recognized in a feature on West Virginia in U.S. News and World Report.

            I am very community-minded as well, serving in various positions and holding numerous offices on behalf of the American Red Cross, the United Way, and The American Cancer Society.  I have been involved in dozens of fundraising and membership drives and have served as chair of the West Virginia Public Defenders Corporation, Berkeley County.

            I am admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Military Appeals and Army Court of Military Review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and all West Virginia state and federal courts.  In my 30 years of practice, I have over 20 published cases of significance to his practice.