Summer starts this month! I can hardly wait. It’s my favorite season, except for the hay fever part. I am really looking forward to those three or four days in the upcoming months when I will be able to go outside without a raincoat. Too bad my season tickets at Safeco Field are in the shade. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the new 2009 Seattle Sounders FC tickets.
New Firm Owners
Aaron Hendelman has become a partner in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s trademark and advertising practice.
Michael Goldfarb has joined Peterson Young Putra as a shareholder. Goldfarb, who was the founder and principal of The Law Office of Michael A. Goldfarb, will expand the firm’s business and commercial hourly and contingent fee practice.
Gabriel Galanda, Jessie Harris and Debora Juarez have been named members in the Seattle office of Williams Kastner. Galanda’s practice focuses on Indian law and gaming and on general litigation. Harris’s practice focuses on commercial litigation, education, insurance, labor and employment, and product liability. Juarez practices in the areas of Indian law and gaming, business, tax and financial services, and education law.
Associate Additions
Jennifer Fan has joined the Seattle office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as an associate attorney for the corporate practice group.
Jenifer Merkel has become an associate in the estate planning practice group of Foster Pepper. Merkel was formerly with Reed, Longyear, Malnati & Ahrens, PLLC. Her experience is in the areas of trust and estate litigation and administration, personal trust and estate planning, guardianship, and real property matters.
Bradford Doll has joined Tupper Mack Brower PLLC as an associate. Doll’s practice is in the areas of land use, natural resources and environmental litigation. Before attending law school, he was an operations manager and a business analyst for Amazon.com.
Of Counsel News
Howard Bye has joined the Seattle office of Stoel Rives as of counsel in the employee benefits section of the business services practice group. His practice focuses on employee benefit matters relating to cafeteria, health and other welfare plans. Bye was previously with the Employee Benefits Institute, Inc.
Brian Weinstein recently joined Bergman & Frockt in the position of senior counsel. Weinstein, a former Washington state senator, represents workers in asbestos litigation.
Lynne Cohee has become of counsel to Tupper Mack Brower PLLC. Cohee practices in the areas of land use, natural resources and environmental litigation, with an emphasis on administrative and judicial appeals.
Honors and Appointments
Jorge Barón has been selected as the executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Barón has served as staff attorney in NWIRP’s domestic violence unit.
My absolute favorite law firm, Ogden Murphy Wallace, reelected Donald Black as the managing member of the firm and Karen Sutherland as the assistant managing member. OMW also named Jeffrey Dunbar chairperson of the litigation department; John O’Donnell as the chairperson of the business department; and James Haney as the chairperson of the municipal department.
Black is a member of the firm’s business and healthcare practice areas, where he focuses on healthcare and general business transactional work. Sutherland (yes, that’s me) focuses on employment and labor law, workplace investigations and training, arbitrations, ethics and conflicts of interest law, and complex litigation.
O’Donnell practices in the business and estate planning field. Dunbar’s practice emphasizes real estate, personal injury, insurance defense, and environmental, commercial and healthcare litigation. Haney’s practice includes all facets of municipal representation, ranging from land use to personnel to public works construction.
Karen Russell has been named to the new position of manager of diversity initiatives at Davis Wright Tremaine. She will work closely with the firm’s clients, management, practice groups, administrative departments and internal diversity committee to develop diversity best practices. Russell will continue working as an employment lawyer in the firm.
Julio Carranza has been named to the Washington Supreme Court’s Commission on Children in Foster Care. Carranza practices law in the Seattle office of Williams Kastner.
Jennifer Wyatt has been appointed chair of the ABA-YLD Women in the Profession Committee. The ABA-YLD is the ABA’s largest entity, composed of approximately 147,000 members. Wyatt was also appointed to ABA-YLD’s Diversity Committee.
Deborah Crabbe, a member of Foster Pepper, PLLC’s creditor’s rights and bankruptcy group, has been appointed co-chair of the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Business Reorganization Committee. The American Bankruptcy Institute has more than 11,500 members.
Seattle attorney William Marler was recently recognized by the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association, which bestowed its Public Justice Award upon him at its recent Law Day awards dinner.
The University of Washington Law School Alumni Award recipients for 2008 are Washington Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, who received the Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Alumni Public Service Award; Professor Rom-bauer, who received the Service Recognition Award; and Judge William Downing and J.H. Jerry Zhu, who both received the Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Obituaries
Former Supreme Court Justice Keith Callow recently died at the age of 82. After serving on the King County Superior Court and the Court of Appeals, he was elected to the Washington Supreme Court in 1984. After his term on the Supreme Court, he joined the U.S. State Department. Callow was an alumnus of the University of Washington School of Law.
Former King County Superior Court Judge Robert Dixon recently died at the age of 78. He graduated from the University of Washington and the University of Washington School of Law. He became a King County Superior Court commissioner in 1969 and a Superior Court judge in 1978.
Carl Jonson recently died at the age of 92. He graduated from the University of Washington School of Law in 1939. He formed Jonson & Jonson, P.S. with his sons in 1972 and practiced with them until his retirement.
Toru Sakahara recently died at the age of 91. He received his B.A. from the University of Washington in 1940 and then was a UW Law School student until his internment in a relocation camp in 1942. After he was released, he finished his law degree at the University of Utah. He was admitted to the Utah Bar in 1944 and the Washington Bar in 1946. Sakahara, a lifelong civil rights advocate, was a founding member of Sakahara and MacArthur.
Leslie Yates recently died at the age of 84. He attended the University of Washington and became a member of the Merchant Marines during World War II. He graduated from UW in 1946 and from the University of Washington School of Law in 1951, and practiced in Seattle for more than 35 years.
Karen Sutherland is the chair of the Employment and Labor Law Practice Group of Ogden Murphy Wallace, PLLC, and chair of the King County Bar Association Bar Bulletin Committee. Her practice focuses on employment and labor law and complex litigation. She can be reached at 1601 Fifth Ave., Suite 2100, Seattle, WA 98101, by fax at 206-447-0215 or by email at ksutherland@omwlaw.com.
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