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Melissa Grant

Melissa Grant Headshot
Commissioner
Melissa Grant is a partner and lead trial attorney at Capstone Law specializing in wage and hour and consumer class actions.  Her mission as an attorney is to protect the rights of non-union workers and consumers. Melissa is responsible for litigating many of the firm's most contentious and high-stakes class actions and PAGA cases. The author of numerous successful motions for class certification, Melissa is the lead or co-lead attorney on numerous certified class actions currently on track for trial, representing over hundreds of thousands of California employees in pursuit of their wage and hour claims. She is also at the forefront in developing the law on the California Labor Code's Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), including administrative exhaustion, the scope of discovery, manageability, and PAGA trial plans. Recently, Melissa has taken three PAGA cases to trial and worked on several key PAGA appellate decisions, including Williams v. Superior Court (Marshalls of CA LLC), 3 Cal.5th 531 (2017). Melissa also represented the plaintiff in Davidson v. Seterus, Inc., 21 Cal. App. 5th 283 (2018), which, in a case of first impression, found that the Defendant, a mortgage servicer, was a debt collector under California's Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and liable for violating it. The case led to enactment of legislation that expressly includes "mortgage debt" within the Rosenthal Act's definition of "consumer credit" and amends the Rosenthal Act to expressly apply to debt collection activities involving residential mortgage loans.

 

Melissa began her legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Harry Pregerson, Justice, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thereafter, she was an associate with Sidley Austin LLP, where she represented Fortune 500 companies in commercial litigation and consumer class actions. Before joining Capstone, Melissa was a Senior Associate with Quinn Emanuel Trial Attorneys, where she was on the trial team that prosecuted Mattel v. Bratz (I), and a staff attorney in the Enforcement Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, investigating ongoing violations of federal securities regulations and statutes. Melissa graduated summa cum laude and first in her class from Southwestern Law School in 1999, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. She earned her undergraduate degree from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, where she received the JFK Public Service Award and the Outstanding Senior Award (graduating class of 4,000 students).

 

Melissa is a member of the Los Angeles County Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles (CAALA), and the Consumer Attorneys of California. She currently serves on the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s President’s Commission on Women in the Legal Profession, the Subcommittee on Gender Bias and Civility, and is a member of the Los Angeles Lawyer Editorial Board, she previously served on the Amicus Subcommittee and the Judicial Appointments Subcommittee.  Melissa previously served on first Advisory Board to the Western Law Center on Law & Poverty.  Melissa has been selected as a Class Action/Mass Torts "Super Lawyer" in 2022 and 2023 and was honored by The Daily Journal as part of this year’s Top Labor & Employment Lawyers award recipients.

 

Melissa has also a long history forming and running grassroots Democratic organizations. She is currently President of the Grassroots Democrats HQ, whose 6,000 volunteers in 2018 helped flip seven California Congressional seats, and whose 10,000+ volunteers in 2020 helped flip the Senate and elect President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The GDHQ now has more than 33,000 volunteers from all over the country.  She is also Vice President for Issues & Endorsements of the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club, after having served as its President for seven years. Melissa is also a 42nd Assembly District Delegate to the California Democratic Party.  

 

As a Commissioner on LA’s Human Relations Commission, Melissa is determined to to do whatever she can to combat hatred and violence committed against jews, Asians, black and brown people, and the LGBTQ+ community.