Mark Leemon

Mark Leemon has over 30 years of trial experience, starting with an extensive ten year criminal defense practice as a staff attorney and supervisor at the Seattle-King County Defender Association. In addition to his own practice there, he helped train numerous other lawyers in trial practice, including several who have become some of Seattle's best criminal lawyers.

Since leaving the Defender Association, he has had a widely varied practice on behalf of victims of personal injuries. Mark has had extensive involvement in the representation of victims of violent crime and was lead trial and appellate counsel in Taggart v. State, the Washington Supreme Court case that established the right of crime victims to sue the state for harm caused by negligent parole and probation supervision. He has before and since successfully prosecuted numerous negligent supervision cases, including Van Wijk v. State, a case brought on behalf of a woman who was stalked and shot by a former boyfriend on community supervision that settled after a week of trial for $1.9 million.

Mark is a recognized resource for issues relating to government liability and has regularly been invited to present continuing legal education programs on this and other subjects. He has appeared on numerous television and radio broadcasts, including the CBS national news program 60 Minutes II.

Mr. Leemon has also had extensive experience with product liability cases. Included in these are a number of cases successfully brought against a manufacturer of defectively designed intraocular lenses used in cataract surgery. Mr. Leemon conducted discovery in this case in several states, and was the leading lawyer nationwide in this litigation. He also tried and settled dozens of cases for victims of asbestos disease, achieving numerous verdicts and settlements of over $1 million each. During the nearly two decades of his involvement in this litigation, Mark won each of these cases he took to trial.

Mr. Leemon has significant experience in litigation on behalf of clients abused and/or neglected in foster homes, boarding homes and other residential care facilities. Among his achievements in this field is a $1 million settlement in a case against DSHS and a nursing home on behalf of a developmentally disabled woman who was sexually assaulted in the home by another resident.

Since going into practice with his wife and current law partner Sidney Royer, Mr. Leemon has increased his involvement in medical malpractice and nursing home litigation, achieving successful results in cases involving negligent diagnosis and treatment and significant birth injuries.

Mark Leemon's career as a civil trial lawyer is notable both for the broad variety of cases he has handled and the degree of success he has achieved on behalf of his clients.  A small sample of his achievements includes:

• Recent $5.25 million settlement for a mother and her child for medical malpractice resulting in a tragic permanent birth injury
• $2.8 million dollar settlement reached during trial for the daughters of a woman murdered by a parolee.
• $850,00 settlement for a teenager seriously injured during a ski race on negligently set course.
• $3.1 million verdict on behalf of the families of three shipyard workers who developed cancer as a result of exposure to asbestos.
• $250,000 settlement for man wrongfully shot by police officer.
• $300,000 settlement with police department for two developmentally disabled women attacked following negligent response to 911 call.
• $1,000,000 settlement for developmentally disabled woman sexually assaulted in nursing home.