Joseph C. Blanton, Jr.

Joseph C. Blanton, Jr. specializes in Federal Court, commercial, medical malpractice, product liability, and probate and trust litigation, and transactions.

He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, the University of Texas Law School, and the University of Edinburgh (Master of Science in History).  He has a CORe Certificate (Economics, Accounting and Data Analytics) and four other certificates from Harvard Business School and a Certificate in Value Investing from Columbia Business School.  From 1985-87, he clerked for U. S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr. in St. Louis.

He joined the law firm in 1987.   Shortly after he joined the firm, he represented production credit associations in Fifth Amendment Takings challenges to assessments of significant portions of their capital under the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987.   He later tried the leading case in the country on the duty of trust protectors to trust beneficiaries and obtained a directed verdict at the close of Plaintiff’s case which was affirmed on appeal.  Most recently, in 2021 and 2022, he first chaired two of the largest medical liability cases ever tried in Outstate Missouri.  In the first case, which lasted three weeks, he led the firm’s defense in a pediatric heart transplant case.  In the second case, which lasted four weeks, he first chaired the firm’s four-lawyer trial team for the target defendants and in a Tarasoff failure to warn case.

During the same time frame, his firm and he were the Southeast Missouri counsel who provided common benefit assistance to the plaintiffs’ steering committee in the Dicamba soybean drift litigation which was consolidated in the Southeast Division of the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.  He also represented an Arkansas Farm Credit System Association in an unprecedented transaction approved by the Farm Credit Administration which returned all of the net equity in the Association to its members.

Blanton is rated AV preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell and Superb by AVVO.com.  He has been recognized as a Missouri Super Lawyer since 2006. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America for the St. Louis market in commercial litigation, medical malpractice defense, product liability defense, plaintiff’s mass torts and class actions, and probate and trust litigation.  He has twice been named the product liability Lawyer of the Year for the St. Louis market and once for medical malpractice defense by Best Lawyers.  He is a Senior Fellow in Litigation Counsel of America and a fellow of the Missouri and American Bar Foundations.

He has received the Purcell Professionalism Award, the President’s Award, and the Award of Merit from The Missouri Bar.   He received the 2023 Ric Gass Trial Presentation Award from Litigation Counsel of America.  He has received the Distinguished Service Award, the Armbruster Key Man Award, and the Community Service Award from the Sikeston Jaycees.  He was named one of Ten Outstanding Missourians by the Missouri Jaycees and Citizen of the Year by the Sikeston Chamber of Commerce.  He has received the Boy Scouts’ Silver Beaver Award.