The Washington State Association for Justice is a trade association of over 2,200 plaintiff's attorneys and staff, with offices in Seattle, Olympia and Spokane.
WSAJ provides members with professional networking, online listserves, a data bank of relevant court documents and legal experts, and a member directory. The organization also provides an extensive continuing legal education (CLE) program in locations throughout Washington. Additionally, WSAJ's Olympia-based government affairs staff lobbies legislators and state agencies to advance a pro-civil justice legislative agenda, intended to preserve and enhance the rights of injured people.
The Washington State Association for Justice was originally formed in 1953 as the National Association of Claimants Compensation Attorneys - NACCA; it became the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association (WSTLA) in 1967 and the Washington State Association for Justice (WSAJ) in 2008. WSAJ current statewide membership comprises over 2,400 attorneys and staff. [1]
The Association aims to protect and promote a fair justice system and the right to trial by jury, and to ensure that any person who is harmed by the misconduct or negligence of others can obtain justice in America's courtrooms, even in actions against the most powerful interests.
The Washington State Association for Justice stated mission is:
We stand up in the courtroom and the halls of government for real people. We defend your Constitutional rights, including the right to have your day in court. We hold corporate and other powerful interests accountable. We are a community creating and sharing resources for our members to secure justice. [2]
The 2022-23 WSAJ President is Nathan P. ("Nate") Roberts, and the President-Elect is Colleen Durkin Peterson. [3] Sara Crumb is WSAJ's Executive Director, serving as chief executive of the organization since 2020. [4] Larry Shannon is the Government Affairs Director, serving in that role since 1994. [5]
The organization is governed by an approximately 35-member Board of Governors, elected by voting members. Voting members must be lawyers who have represented the plaintiff in at least 50 percent of their cases. WSAJ's attorney members practice a broad range of legal practice areas, including personal injury, wrongful death, medical malpractice, worker's compensation, insurance litigation, consumer protection, employment litigation, nursing home abuse, and product liability.
A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly a US phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil action brought by a plaintiff demands a legal or equitable remedy from a court. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint. If the plaintiff is successful, judgment is in the plaintiff's favor, and a variety of court orders may be issued to enforce a right, award damages, or impose a temporary or permanent injunction to prevent an act or compel an act. A declaratory judgment may be issued to prevent future legal disputes.
A bar association is a professional association of lawyers as generally organized in countries following the Anglo-American types of jurisprudence. The word bar is derived from the old English/European custom of using a physical railing to separate the area in which court business is done from the viewing area for the general public.
The Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) is the office within the Department of Justice that provides executive and administrative support for the 93 United States Attorneys located throughout the 50 states, District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Such support includes, but is not limited to, legal education, administrative oversight, technical support, and the creation of uniform policies. The organization of the EOUSA is laid out in Title 3 of the Justice Manual., which is provided by the United States Department of Justice.
The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) is a politically conservative, Christian-based legal organization in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Attorney's fee is a chiefly United States term for compensation for legal services performed by an attorney for a client, in or out of court. It may be an hourly, flat-rate or contingent fee. Recent studies suggest that when lawyers charge a flat-fee rather than billing by the hour, they work less hard on behalf of clients and clients get worse outcomes. Attorney fees are separate from fines, compensatory and punitive damages, and from court costs in a legal case. Under the "American rule", attorney fees are usually not paid by the losing party to the winning party in a case, except pursuant to specific statutory or contractual rights.
The American Association for Justice (AAJ), formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) is a nonprofit advocacy and lobbying organization for plaintiff's lawyers in the United States. Focused on opposing tort reform, the organization is one of the Democratic Party's most influential political allies, according to The Washington Post.
University of Illinois Chicago School of Law is a public law school in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1899, the school offers programs for both part-time and full-time students, with both day and night classes available, and offers January enrollment.
A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal services to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence of another person, company, government agency or any entity. Personal injury lawyers primarily practice in the area of law known as tort law. Examples of common personal injury claims include injuries from slip and fall accidents, traffic collisions, defective products, workplace injuries and professional malpractice.
Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC) is a professional trade organization consisting of more than 3,000 California lawyers who represent the interests of consumers as plaintiffs in civil tort actions and in the California Legislature. The organization's lawyer members support access to justice by representing plaintiffs in civil litigation on a contingency-based fee system. According to the Consumer Attorneys of California, its members represent individuals harmed by misconduct by corporate and government entities with greater access to resources. Up until 1995, it was known as the California Trial Lawyers Association. The organization's longtime CEO is Nancy Drabble, who, in 2022, was recognized for her efforts to help bring about a compromise between different interest groups for doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies, to help pass legislation that adjusts the cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases for inflation under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA).
Formerly founded as the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART) in 1996, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) is a national civil rights and educational organization in the United States. SALDEF is a national 501(c) 3 non-profit, nonpartisan, membership-based body.
Tort reform refers to changes in the civil justice system in common law countries that aim to reduce the ability of plaintiffs to bring tort litigation or to reduce damages they can receive. Such changes are generally justified under the grounds that litigation is an inefficient means to compensate plaintiffs; that tort law permits frivolous or otherwise undesirable litigation to crowd the court system; or that the fear of litigation can serve to curtail innovation, raise the cost of consumer goods or insurance premiums for suppliers of services, and increase legal costs for businesses. Tort reform has primarily been prominent in common law jurisdictions, where criticism of judge-made rules regarding tort actions manifests in calls for statutory reform by the legislature.
Theodore H. Frank is an American lawyer, activist, and legal writer, based in Washington, D.C. He is the counsel of record and petitioner in Frank v. Gaos, the first Supreme Court case to deal with the issue of cy pres in class action settlements; he is one of the few Supreme Court attorneys ever to argue his own case. He wrote the vetting report of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the John McCain campaign in the 2008 presidential election. He founded the Center for Class Action Fairness (CCAF) in 2009; it temporarily merged with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2015, but as of 2019 CCAF is now part of the new Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, a free-market nonprofit public-interest law firm founded by Frank and his CCAF colleague Melissa Holyoak. The New York Times calls him the "leading critic of abusive class-action settlements"; the Wall Street Journal has referred to him as "a leading tort-reform advocate" and praised his work exposing dubious practices by plaintiffs' attorneys in class actions.
The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from Communist Party authorities. Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for AIDS victims, environmental damage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment.
Virginia Mary Kendall is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. President George W. Bush appointed her to the bench on January 3, 2006. In addition to serving on the bench, Judge Kendall is also a noted expert on child exploitation and human trafficking, as well as an adjunct law professor and author.
Legal financing is the mechanism or process through which litigants can finance their litigation or other legal costs through a third party funding company.
The Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) is a 30,000-member section of the American Bar Association. It is a forum uniting plaintiff, defense, insurance and corporate counsel to advance the civil justice system. The section is broken down into general committees, standing committees and task forces.
NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), is a 6-to-3 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the reservation of jurisdiction by a federal district court did not bar the U.S. Supreme Court from reviewing a state court's ruling, and also overturned certain laws enacted by the state of Virginia in 1956 as part of the Stanley Plan and massive resistance, as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The statutes here stricken down by the Supreme Court had expanded the definitions of the traditional common law crimes of champerty and maintenance, as well as barratry, and had been targeted at the NAACP and its civil rights litigation.
Brad Lowber Hendricks is an American attorney, former President of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association, and President of The Brad Hendricks Law Firm, one of the largest firms in the State of Arkansas. He is the son of Lowber Hendricks, a prominent Arkansas attorney and Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge. Brad's decision to become an attorney is largely attributed to his father, Lowber Hendricks. His siblings are Karol Anne McNutt and Bryan Hendricks.
Lieff Cabraser is an American plaintiffs' law firm headquartered in San Francisco. The firm was founded in 1972 by Robert L. Lieff. Elizabeth Cabraser became a partner in 1981.
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