Seattle and King County,
Civil Rights Claims and Criminal Defense

The practice file places 26 matters in King County, 11 in federal court and 15 in the state courts. Eleven of them are published below with the outcome on the record.

The civil track is Section 1983 litigation. The claims name King County and its sheriff's office, the City of Seattle, and the cities of Federal Way, Renton, Auburn and Bellevue, and they turn on use of force, false arrest, wrongful death and the wider question of police practices. In each one the analysis reads what the officers knew and did against what the agency's own policy and training required of them, which is the ground of excessive force casework wherever it arises.

The criminal track runs through King County Superior Court, and homicide prosecutions are part of it. There the analysis is retained by the defense and turns the other way: it reads the police investigation that produced the charge, from the handling of the scene and the recording of each interview to the video and the reports written about it. That work is set out on the page for homicide defense casework.

The same measure serves both tracks. A Seattle plaintiff's file and a King County defendant's file are set against the same policy, the same training records and the same body of generally accepted police practice, and the report says what that measure shows, whichever side sent the record.

Two courts carry most of the King County file, and the citations name both: the Western District of Washington for most of the federal civil claims, and King County Superior Court for the criminal prosecutions. The remaining civil claims sit in the state courts, as the panel above counts them. A retention from either one starts from the same complete record: video, dispatch, the reports, the statements and depositions, the training and discipline files, and the agency's written policy as it stood on the date of the encounter.

One King County matter left a record of its own about the expert. The court's ruling in Alvarez v. King County addressed his background on the record, and the homepage reproduces that ruling in full. Whether testimony comes in, in any particular case, remains retaining counsel's question.

Retaining from Seattle runs exactly as retaining from anywhere else, and the Washington page sets out the engagement in full. In short: it opens with a conflict check, a first inquiry holds the case type and posture, the court and case number, the deadlines and the parties, and nothing privileged travels with it.

After retention the record travels on physical media by mail or courier, depositions are taken by Zoom or a similar platform, and trial testimony runs on the published travel terms. The fee schedule is on the For Counsel page, and the Library note on what to send with a first inquiry covers the first step.