Craig Kelley

One of Omaha’s Leading Personal Injury Attorneys

A blue-collar kid from Council Bluffs, IA, Craig grew up around auto service stations and race tracks. “I grew up in a family that raced lots of things. My family was in the service station business and our passion was racing. When I was in ninth grade, my parents bought Sunset Speedway in Omaha. The great thing about the speedway was that it allowed me to continue schooling in the winter and work in the summer to make enough money to keep going to school.”

After graduating from Northwest Missouri State University with a business degree, he planned to bring a law degree from Creighton University back to the family business, but success in law school and trial law competitions led to a decision to pursue a full-time carrer as a trial lawyer

“I was on the other side of what we here do here at IKCS in law school as a law clerk,” said Craig, “and I just never enjoyed celebrating a ‘win’ where an injured person got nothing or less than they should. These injured folks were left in a lurch; it just never did sit right with me. Considering my philosophy of life, I knew I needed to make a change. A better career to move for me was to represent injured people. After a short search, I found John Inserra and his father back in 1986, and this Firm is where I have been ever since graduating from law school. My work and my faith lined up, and I have been very happy and fulfilled to go work each day for the last 38 years where I know I help the people who need it.”

Craig started with lots of smaller injury cases and helped with the firm’s railroad-employee injury practice. “At that time we were handling railroad cases from Kansas City to Denver. When I was a young lawyer, I spent a lot of time in North Platte and Alliance, Nebraska. I probably had more trials and more depositions as a young lawyer in my first 15 years of practice than most people have in their careers, because of our big case load.”

“Over the last three-plus decades, I have had some very good trial results. Being on this side of the law that helped injured people became my passion.”

It was a railroad case not involving an employee though, that brought the firm its largest settlement and made Craig a partner, and the Inserra & Kelley firm was born. “It was a case where a mother and two daughters were killed at a railroad crossing. I represented the 18-month old son that was paralyzed by the accident. Of course they said that crossing was safe even though there were no warning lights or crossing arms. We hunted down the retired engineers that they tried to hide and discovered they were complaining about that crossing for a long time. We caught the railroad and the county in several untruths. We put together a structured settlement for that young minor child that served him through adulthood.

Craig loves his profession. “We are very involved in, and very proud about, helping people heal to the absolute fullest extent possible first and foremost, and then getting them results for their losses and permanent injury. Whether our clients end up in a fight about liability, medical care, or treatment, if you don’t have an experienced injury law firm, you are more likely to get turned down on liability or you will fail to receive proper medical treatment. Our team fights a lot of different battles every day for our clients. It is most rewarding to help people heal better and faster with the proper medical treatment, not to mention make the world a safer place with our work. It’s satisfying to help our clients battle against big insurance and corporations that these people simply can’t effectively fight on their own.”

Craig’s practice emphasizes all areas of personal injury law, with a large emphasis on vehicle, motorcycle and bicycle-related cases and claims. The firm is designated legal counsel of the Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.), and is also the designated legal counsel for most motorcycle chapters in the surrounding area in both Nebraska and western Iowa.

“Our other new area of expertise is bad medical devices and pharmaceuticals/drugs, either as a defect in design, manufacturing or marketing these defective products,” said Kelley. “Medical device and drug liability began to grow with bad breast implants, bad birth control devices and bad drug side-effects. There have been a lot of drug and device injury cases in the last 15-20 years, and these cases are national multi-district litigation groups that require specific expertise. Drug companies rush to take products and devices to the market and they don’t do the proper required testing they used to do. We are one of very few firms in Nebraska and Iowa that deal with complex cases on a national level.”

Craig and his wife, Kerry, the retired CIO at STRATCOM Headquarters (Offutt Air Base) and CEO of Kerry Kelley Consulting, L.L.C., reside in the Dundee area of Omaha and have two sons, Chris (wife Alexa) and Brendan (Lives in Denver with wife Nicole), and a daughter, Caitlin, who is a PACU Nurse at Children’s Hospital in Omaha. Craig is also the Founder and Principal of Kelley Auto Racing Management Advisors (K.A.R.M.A.), former General Manager of Nebraska Raceway Park (which became I-80 Speedway) from 2000-2003, and the former 25-year Co-owner of Omaha’s long-time NASCAR race track and “Only Place to be on Sunday Night”, Sunset Speedway until its closing in 2000, as well as the owner of Stereo West AutoToys from 2005-2010

He enjoys riding on his Harley’s, bicycling with the Dundee Chain Gang, frequenting live music/concerts, watching the sports of his alma maters and being involved with his Saint Margaret Mary parish events, as well as serving on many non-profit and charitable boards around the metro. His passion remains helping injured people heal, and then getting his clients the fair and proper compensation for the damages they suffered due to the carelessness of others!