Dearie Law Group, P.S.

A Pierce County jury awarded $130 million against the State of Washington and a South Hill daycare over the death of a 2-year-old girl who died of blunt force trauma in March 2022 after the state's child welfare agency returned her to a home where her abuser remained present and daycare staff failed to report visible injuries they had seen. After a five-week trial the jury found the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families 90% at fault and Love and Laughter Learning Centers, Inc. 10% at fault. Of that total, $52 million was awarded individually to the girl's estate, with the remainder split among four other family beneficiaries, and the jury returned a further $10 million against the mother and her boyfriend. News accounts described it as the largest verdict of its kind in Washington state history. Ray Dearie of Dearie Law Group represented the family.

A Pierce County jury awarded Cristina Anderson $21 million in August 2023 after she was struck in a downtown Sumner crosswalk and suffered a traumatic brain injury. The driver carried $25,000 in liability coverage and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after the verdict, and the fight over who pays the rest is still in the courts.

A King County jury awarded Lesley Mettler Auld $13.1 million after she slipped on an algae-covered Seattle sidewalk in July 2021 and ruptured both quadriceps tendons. Jurors found both the City of Seattle and 14th & Dravus LLC, the owner of the adjacent apartment building, negligent, and split the fault 52 percent to the property owner and 48 percent to the city over an overgrown hedge that shaded the walkway and the moss and algae that grew under it. Auld, a longtime personal trainer and 14-time Ironman finisher, had three surgeries to repair the tendons, and her examining physicians said she would need at least three more operations on her right knee and could lose the right leg above the knee if those failed. The Washington Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in March 2026, and 14th & Dravus has since asked the state Supreme Court to take up the case.

A Snohomish County jury awarded $3 million to a woman who was sexually abused for years starting at age 13 by a Monroe police sergeant she met through the DARE program at her school. The jury found the state's child welfare agency negligent because one of its Child Protective Services investigators, a mandatory reporter who was close to the sergeant, suspected the abuse and never reported it. The same jury found the Monroe School District was not negligent. The verdict came on November 2, 2023, and judgment was entered later that month. The state appealed to Division One of the Washington Court of Appeals, and the woman separately asked the trial court to vacate the judgment and order a new trial over a recording she says the state failed to produce in discovery.