Jason Melton

Jason Melton grew up in San Antonio, Texas, working the register after school at his father’s women’s clothing business, where he learned that reading the person in front of you matters more than the product. He started as a prosecutor in Miami, one of Florida’s busiest jurisdictions, which handed a young lawyer real trials one after another. “I haven’t had a day as a lawyer where I wasn’t a trial lawyer,” he says.

Jason approaches every case by picturing the trial first, an instinct from his years as a prosecutor that he argues is essential to valuing a claim and moving an insurer. He says the people-reading skills learned at his father’s store carry into the courtroom, where knowing the judge can matter as much as knowing the law. He is candid that high-volume prosecutor and public defender jobs often produce more trial experience than more prestigious paths, and he encourages established lawyers to give younger ones a seat at trial.

A detour running a friend’s congressional campaign led to the partnership. That friend, Robert Whittel, is the name beside Jason’s at Whittel & Melton, LLC, the personal injury firm the two built after Jason went out and learned personal injury work from the ground up. He began practicing civil law in the mid-2000s, and the partners formed the firm in 2009. Jason says many of his verdicts came in tough jurisdictions, before jurors for whom $50,000 is a life-changing sum, and he is proud of them.

Jason earned a B.A. from Southern Methodist University in 1996 and his J.D. from The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in 2002, and he studied at the University of San Diego School of Law’s Comparative Law Institute in Florence, Italy. He was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2002 and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Before civil practice, he served as an assistant state attorney in the 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade.

Jason holds an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell, was named to Florida Super Lawyers for 2021 and 2022 after Rising Stars honors from 2012 to 2014, and is a life member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. He was listed among the Top 20 Motorcycle Injury Lawyers in the U.S. for 2020 and 2021. He is a founding member and president of the National Academy of Motorcycle Injury Lawyers. Whittel & Melton is in Spring Hill, Florida, at thefllawfirm.com.