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Shelli Calland

Shelli helps clients secure recoveries and solve legal problems both in and out of court. An experienced trial and appellate litigator, Shelli has successfully represented clients in complex and fast-paced commercial lawsuits in federal and state courts around the country. She has won cases against insurance companies, judgment evaders, manufacturers, and other defendants in cases involving fraud, breach of contract, violations of consumer protection statutes, and other wrongdoing. Shelli’s clients include major public corporations, family-owned companies, government entities, and individuals.

Shelli handles claims for many types of damage and loss. For example:
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• Shelli served as co-lead counsel for a tire distributor in a litigation with the distributor’s overseas tire manufacturer and in an arbitration to recover defense costs from the distributor’s insurer. Both cases resulted in multimillion dollar payments to the distributor.
  
  
• Shelli settled a class action for $27 million after a major life insurer improperly imposed massively increased premiums and charges to “shock” elderly policyholders into surrendering their policies.
  
  
• Shelli helped obtain an arbitration award rescinding a multimillion dollar asset sale.
  
  
• Shelli currently represents a major distributor of grocery bags and other products in several litigations, including a RICO lawsuit seeking recoveries related to the sale of recalled hand sanitizer.
  
  
• Shelli represents corporate and individual plaintiffs, including several women who won as-yet unpaid sexual harassment judgments totaling $2.5 million, in RICO cases arising out of a judgment evasion scheme perpetrated by a conglomerate of Chinese companies and their American affiliates.
  
  
• Shelli represents two school districts in first-party property insurance coverage lawsuits involving damage caused by catastrophic weather events.
  
  
• Shelli also advises many clients on a wide range of insurance issues both large and small, including negotiating favorable policy terms, interpreting policy language, and resolving coverage disputes, often without the need to file a lawsuit.

Shelli has maintained an active pro bono practice since the beginning of her career. Her pro bono matters have included:

• Helping a Sudanese mother of four obtain a divorce from her husband, custody of her children, and a fair marital property distribution.​
  
  
• ​Achieving a favorable settlement for an airplane passenger singled out because of her Middle Eastern name who was removed from the plane at gunpoint, strip-searched, and detained for no legitimate reason.
  
  
• Representing a tenants’ organization seeking to exercise its right to purchase the apartment complex where its members lived.
  
  
• Representing criminal defendants accused of murder, theft, and assault at trial and sentencing hearings.
  
  
• Shelli graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

(202) 793-2900
scalland@wmclaw.com
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Education:

• J.D., Harvard Law School (2005)
• B.A., Harvard University (2001)
  
  

Bar Memberships

• District of Columbia
• Virginia
  
  

Publications

• “Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada: Stop and Identify Statutes Do Not Violate the Fourth or Fifth Amendments,” 40 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 251 (2005)