Joseph P. Menello is a Shareholder, and the managing partner of Wicker Smith’s Atlanta office, where his work is primarily focused on general and premises liability, negligent security, medical malpractice, and retail and trucking litigation. 

Joe’s career at Wicker Smith began as an office services employee in the copy room of the Orlando office while in high school. He re-joined the firm as a summer associate after his 3L year, and as an associate upon graduation from law school. Joe was promoted to partner a few years later. In March 2020, he was tapped by his mentor, Dick Ford, to lead the firm’s expansion into Georgia. The Atlanta office opened with two lawyers in June 2021, and under Joe’s leadership, has grown steadily every year since. 

Joe is an experienced trial lawyer with dozens of excellent outcomes to his credit. He first-chaired his first trial as a third year associate, and since then he has represented some of the firm’s biggest clients in the courtroom, including major national and regional grocery and retail chains and gas stations, Orlando-area entertainment and theme park companies, national trucking companies, and some of Central Florida’s largest hospital systems. In 2019, he was instrumental in securing a $13 million defense verdict in a case related to claims of negligence during a hysterectomy. In 2023, he successfully argued to have a Plaintiff’s expert’s testimony stricken under Daubert in a wrongful death case, which subsequently left the Court no choice but to grant summary judgment and dismiss the case against our client hospital entirely.