Mellori Lumpkin is a litigation associate in Holland & Knight's Atlanta office and focuses her practice on the areas of business litigation, class actions, product liability and employment. She has experience in defending consumer class actions, shareholder derivative actions and actions alleging various business and contract disputes. Ms. Lumpkin has routinely dealt with complex factual and legal issues involving antitrust, RICO, business torts and Truth-in-Lending Act laws. Additionally, Ms. Lumpkin has represented corporations, public entities and educational institutions in state, federal and appellate courts in the manufacturing, retail chain and technology industries.
Ms. Lumpkin's product liability experience includes representing clients against allegations of strict product liability, negligent design and manufacture, and failure to warn. In her employment practice, Ms. Lumpkin has handled multiple charges of discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She has also counseled healthcare, staffing, independent school and higher education clients on a wide range of employment-related issues, including discipline and termination of employees; harassment, discrimination, and retaliation claims by employees; investigation of employee misconduct; wage and hour compliance; Family and Medical Leave Act compliance; recordkeeping requirements and best practices; and restrictive covenants.
Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Lumpkin clerked at the District Attorney's Office for the South Georgia Judicial Circuit Court where she successfully tried two felony jury cases to verdict.
While in law school, Ms. Lumpkin was a supervising editor for the California Law Review, an articles editor for the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law & Policy and a teaching assistant for the First-Year Writing Program. Ms. Lumpkin was also a member of the Board of Advocates, Berkeley Law School's national mock trial competition team. In addition, she was the Western Region Champion in the Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial Competition and the director of Berkeley Law's Bales Mock Trial Competition.
