Additional Information

In this legal malpractice action against the lawyer for both husband and wife in a dissolution matter, we represented the former wife in suing the lawyer for malpractice when she did not receive child support, spousal maintenance or a fair parenting plan. After the legal malpractice case was dismissed by the Kitsap County Superior Court, we successfully obtained a reversal at the Court of Appeals, Division II. Following remand, the case settled for a confidential sum.

With local counsel, Michael F. Skolnick, we represented the family of a student at a residential preparatory academy in recovering damages in a confidential amount for injuries sustained when the daughter was seriously injured while riding as a passenger on an all-terrain vehicle provided by and at the home of a faculty member of the defendant school.

Following Farmers Insurance policyholder Lodermeier's appeal by trial de novo of an arbitration award in favor of our client, the case was tried to a jury over several days, beginning on November 29, 2006, in the King County Superior Court at the Regional Justice Center in Kent. The jury returned a verdict that was 50 percent better than the pre-arbitration offer and 15 percent better than the final pre-trial offer extended by Farmers.

Our client was involved in two successive collisions, two weeks apart, in April of 2004. In each collision, the other driver was solely at fault. Because the treatment overlapped between the first and the second accident, each insurer attributed much of its liability exposure to the other. We brought suit against both parties in the same case. The Arbitrator granted an award against one driver was $16,250, an improvement from the $5,500 offer; the other award was for $32,500, an improvement from the $11,000 offer. No appeal was taken from the arbitrator's award.

Mr. Wiggenhorn sued his former lawyer for failing to advise him that he was agreeing to provide his wife with far more spousal maintenance than any Snohomish County trial court would order. After we succeeded in resisting the defendants' motion to dismiss, the client obtained a satisfactory settlement in mediation.

A West Virginia corporation sued two of its former lawyers in legal malpractice in connection with the lawyers' failure to deny a request for admissions issued by the other side in the underlying case in a timely manner. Despite winning the underlying case on the merits both in arbitration and at trial, the court of appeals reversed, and a substantial verdict was returned against Payne Engineering, based on its failure to deny the admissions that went to the core of the underlying proceeding. Settlements were obtained from both law firm defendants.

We defended Mr. Callahan against a suit by his former lawyer for legal fees of $3,600 by counterclaiming for a violation of the Consumer Protection Act and in legal malpractice, based on the lawyer's mishandling of two different cases. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the former client and against the lawyer in the total amount of $34,965.25.

We represented Mr. Tripoli against defendant KPMG Peat Marwick, the largest professional group in the world. Mr. Tripoli sued his former employer for wrongful termination of his contract to work in developing claims offices in Kuwait that would have allowed Kuwaiti citizens and businesses to prosecute war reparations claims against Saddam Hussein's Iraq government. The non-jury case resulted in a total judgment against KPMG and in favor of Tripoli in the amount of $121,790.84.

In this case, a local law firm sued two former clients for over $39,000 in claimed fees owed. Mr. Benjamin defended the clients by asserting that the way the law firm cashed a restricted business purpose check and applied it for its fees and its manner of billing the client violated the state's Consumer Protection Act, RCW 19.86.010. Working in concert with lead co-counsel Robert B. Gould, the case resulted in a jury verdict in favor of the clients in the net amount of $60,948.31. A notice of appeal was filed, but no appeal was taken and the judgment was paid in full.

In this case we sued the contractor for poor workmanship in building a patio and arbor for our client. The cement pad was tilted in such a way that the water drained into the home. The arbor was constructed of the poorest quality. Full recovery was made against the bond in an amount sufficient to get the problem fixed by way of judgment in the amount of $11,490.