Karen Koehler
About Karen Koehler
Karen Koehler has practiced plaintiff personal injury law since 1985, when she passed the Washington bar at age 25 after graduating from Seattle University School of Law. She worked for an insurance defense firm and later for Tom Chambers, a mentor who later joined the State Supreme Court, before joining Stritmatter Law in 2004. Known among opposing counsel as "The Velvet Hammer," she served as President of the Washington State Association for Justice from 2007 to 2008 and founded the Spinal Cord Injury Association of Washington, serving as its Executive Director from 2010 to 2017. Her cases have included a $123 million verdict arising from the Seattle Ride the Ducks Aurora Bridge disaster and numerous multi-million-dollar verdicts in wrongful death, brain injury, and medical malpractice. She is a perennial Super Lawyers Top 50 Women Washington honoree and holds an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell.
Notable case results
A King County jury awarded $123 million to 40 plaintiffs after five international students were killed and dozens injured when a Ride the Ducks amphibious vehicle suffered a catastrophic axle fracture on Seattle's Aurora Bridge in 2015.
A Pierce County jury awarded $44.7 million to an EMT and volunteer firefighter left with permanent injuries after an SUV driver turned left through an uncontrolled intersection and into his path -- a verdict Washington courts later upheld in full.
Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore secured a $10 million settlement from the City of Seattle on behalf of more than 50 protesters who were struck by blast balls, tear gas, and other crowd-control weapons deployed by Seattle Police Department officers during the May and June 2020 George Floyd demonstrations.
The estate of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant Black mother of four fatally shot by Seattle police during a mental health crisis in 2017, settled its wrongful-death civil rights claim for $3.5 million after a state appellate court reversed a prior dismissal and reinstated the case for trial.
A Grant County jury found that Tracy Nessl shot and killed Timothy McNamara on Christmas Day 2014 at his home in Belize and awarded his children $3.327 million, reported as one of the largest civil verdicts in Grant County history.
Seattle Ride the Ducks Aurora Bridge disaster
S. v. Holguin (motorcycle accident)
Owen v. State of Washington (wrongful death)
Fogle v. Clark County (brain injury)
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
