Walter Mason focuses on wrongful death, civil rights, medical malpractice, products liability, and catastrophic injury cases. Mr. Mason has a deep passion to achieve justice for victims. His most potent memories of pride and accomplishment come from the victories he has shared with clients and seeing the subsequent transformations in their lives.
Mr. Mason attended the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, where he graduated fourth in his class and was Note and Comment Editor of the Utah Law Review. Mr. Mason interned with Justice John A. Pearce at the Utah Supreme Court, was a quarterfinalist in a national moot court competition, was invited to the Order of the Coif, and received academic awards in Torts, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Statutory Interpretation, and other subjects. Concurrently with his law degree, Mr. Mason obtained a Master of Business Administration, studied international business in Tokyo, Japan, and participated in a consortium on human rights at the University of Oxford in England.
Prior to joining DKOW, Mr. Mason spent several years working under the careful tutelage of one of Utah’s preeminent civil rights attorneys, Rocky Anderson, who is the former mayor of Salt Lake City. Their firm, Anderson & Mason, brought civil suits in every level of state and federal court (except small claims court), against city, county, state, and federal defendants. Their accomplishments included obtaining justice for the family of a woman fatally deprived of medical care in the Salt Lake County Jail and for an innocent bystander who was shot by a police officer. Mr. Anderson and Mr. Mason challenged parts of Utah’s medical cannabis law that unfairly and unreasonably restricted access for certain patients, prevailed against the State of Utah by proving a state law violated the First Amendment rights of a local movie theatre, challenged unconstitutional surveillance conducted by the NSA, repeatedly raised the unconstitutionality of state laws limiting the rights of people to bring claims against law enforcement officers, and vigorously fought for the rights of victims of child sexual abuse to bring claims against their abusers.
At DKOW, Mr. Mason manages the national opioid litigation on behalf of eighteen of Utah's twenty-nine counties, which has resulted in tens of millions of dollars in settlements. Mr. Mason has successfully resolved many cases of catastrophic injury and wrongful death, ranging from medical malpractice, to product defects, to police shootings, to trucking accidents. Mr. Mason is adept at managing every stage of a case, from initial workup through trial and appeal.
Mr. Mason has briefed and argued matters before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Utah Supreme Court, and the Utah Court of Appeals. Those cases include:
Feasel v. Tracker Marine LLC et al, 2021 UT 47, in which Mr. Mason helped establish the legal standards that apply in Utah to determine whether product warnings are adequate.
Smith v. Volkswagen SouthTowne, 2024 UT App 33, in which Mr. Mason protected the right of a plaintiff to obtain interest on a judgment (in this case, that interest was over $400,000).
Mitchell v. Roberts, No. 21-4055 (10th Cir. 2022), in which Mr. Mason advocated for the rights of victims of child sexual abuse to bring claims against the perpetrators.