by Jay H. Krulewitch

This article originally appeared in the November 2017 issue of Trial News, the monthly publication of the Washington State Association for Justice.

Recently, Dylan Kilpatric, WSAJ EAGLE Member, obtained a tremendous result in a minor impact soft tissue (MIST) case for a very deserving client. This article will explore who Dylan is, his background, his major influences as a trial attorney, and the recent jury verdict he obtained on an automobile personal injury case filed in King County Superior Court.

On Monday, October 16, 2017, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dylan Kilpatric, a partner in the Kirkland law firm of Davidson, Kilpatric, and Krislock, specializing in personal injury and real estate/commercial law. In my interview of Dylan, I was struck by his grasp of not only trial practice and personal injury, but the importance he put on knowledge and new ideas! Early on in our conversation, Dylan indicated that one of the most important influences on who he is and what he believes in is Thomas Kuhn. For those of you who may not know of Thomas Kuhn, he wrote a seminal book called “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” I had not heard anyone mention Thomas Kuhn since I was a graduate student in sociology at Indiana University. But it was as natural for Dylan to incorporate Thomas Kuhn into his philosophy of being a trial lawyer as it would be for many of us to incorporate the ideas of Clarence Darrow or Earl Rogers into our practice. See Paul Luvera, “Lessons from Trial Greats Earl Rogers and Clarence Darrow,” Trial News: October 2017. But more on Thomas Kuhn later. So, who is this wonderful lawyer who happened to obtain a nice result on a MIST case?

As it turns out, Dylan is a native Seattleite! Dylan was born and raised in the Green Lake area and graduated high school from Seattle Preparatory School. He attended the Claremont Colleges, specifically Pitzer College, where he graduated in 2005 with a degree in psychology after starting out in neuroscience. No wonder Thomas Kuhn was someone he was drawn to, as Dylan has a strong science bent. Dylan’s path to becoming a lawyer was a bit circuitous. He did not go straight from his undergraduate studies into law school. Instead, he took time off to work and see law from the inside. Dylan started out as an office assistant with the Northwest Defender Association (“NDA”), a public defender agency in the Seattle-King County area, where he spent part of the day opening files and part of the day seeing clients in the jail. Dylan worked at NDA for about four years, from 2005 to 2009. Along the way, he did an investigator internship with The Defender Association, another public defender agency in the area, and ultimately became a staff investigator, working on an assortment of different criminal cases ranging from DUI cases to homicide cases. It was then that Dylan realized he wanted to go back to law school. As he told me, “I wanted to be a lawyer, I wanted to be making the decisions about who we were going to investigate and why, and starting to put together the defenses myself.”

Thus, in 2009, Dylan began his law school career at Seattle University, where he excelled at the trial competitions offered by the law school. Dylan competed for and won a spot on the regional mock trial team, where he ended up competing in a national competition in New York City. His mock trial team placed fifth out of twelve teams from around the country. In 2012, after graduating from law school, Dylan was unable to find a position as a public defender attorney due to a hiring freeze put in place during the long-anticipated consolidation of King County’s Public Defense Program. Thus, he began working as a personal injury attorney with his father’s law firm! And, in truth, we are all the richer for that decision, as, like his father, Dylan is not only a WSAJ member, but an EAGLE member as well!

So, you ask, what was the case that led to this interview in the first place? In sum, Dylan was intrigued and hooked by the story of his client, a young, twenty-five year old woman who was rear-ended on January 24, 2015 and suffered, in essence, a permanent injury to her back requiring treatment for the next four to five years. The medical evidence was helpful in part, and hurtful in part. Yet it was the overall story of his client’s case that made it powerful and compelling to the jury. In terms of actual property damage, a little over $800 in damage was sustained to the plaintiff’s vehicle and just over $2,300 was sustained to the defendant’s vehicle. The defendant admitted liability. It was kind of hard for the defense to contest liability when the defendant admitted that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, causing the collision. Dylan’s client suffered injuries to her “neck, shoulder, rib cage, chest, lower back, and headaches.” Two days after the collision, she sought treatment from her naturopath, who prescribed physical therapy, massage, and chiropractic treatment. Three months later, her low back pain persisted. She was then referred to an osteopathic doctor at Evergreen Health Sport and Spine, who prescribed more physical therapy, massage therapy, and chiropractic treatment. Eight months later, having met her therapy goals, she was discharged from physical therapy. However, she still reported to her physical therapist that she was having ongoing back issues, including fatigue and soreness at the end of the day. She then had a ten-month pause in treatment but returned to her naturopath, who prescribed additional massage therapy. She ended up returning to Evergreen Health Sport and Spine, where she was seen by a different doctor who ordered an MRI and continued to treat her for another seven months. In February 2017, she developed radicular pain down her leg and her doctor ordered an MRI to determine the cause of her pain. The MRI came back normal and the radicular pain subsided about a month later. Her last date of physical therapy was in April 2017.

The defense used the usual suspects as their expert witnesses, i.e., Alan Tencer and Dr. Patrick Bays. Dylan brought a solid, well-reasoned motion to exclude Alan Tencer before the Honorable Julie Spector, who granted Dylan’s motion! As for Patrick Bays, according to Dylan, Bays ended up alienating the jury and, ultimately, was seen for who he is, i.e., “a professional witness.” The case was tried before the Honorable John Chun of King County Superior Court. The trial started on October 9, 2017 and the jury returned its verdict on October 12, 2017. In a motion in limine, Dylan was fortunate to have his motion to exclude the photographs and evidence of property damage granted by Judge Chun. The defense wanted to have it both ways: they wanted to stipulate to liability, yet be able to show the jury that this was a “minor collision” through the photographs of the vehicle damage and the damage estimates. Judge Chun denied that request. In the end, the jury returned a verdict of $129,000! When compared to the defense offer made at mediation, which was $25,000, the verdict Dylan obtained for his client was a magnificent result! At trial, in addition to other damages, Dylan asked the jury for his client’s medical special damages, which came to $16,700. In putting on his case, Dylan called just two lay witnesses: the client and her husband, whom she met just five months after the collision. They did not get married until just recently! The husband was able to talk about the effect of this collision upon the client. In talking to the jury after the verdict, it was clear to Dylan that the jury was most interested in the client’s story. While the defense attempted to make the case about a series of progress notes—some of which were not helpful to the plaintiff—the jury was more focused on the overall story of Dylan’s client, and that is what carried the day!

Dylan is the son of two very distinguished attorneys: Dan Kilpatric, a highly regarded personal injury attorney with whom Dylan practices, and his mother, Colleen Kinerk, a highly respected employment attorney in the Seattle area. In terms of major influences on his development as a trial attorney, Dylan indicated that David Ball’s work in teaching trial lawyers how to be more effective—especially with opening statements—and a longtime family friend, James Fucetola, have been major influences upon him. Mr. Fucetola was someone who used to watch Dylan and his brother, Connor, and who became a fine trial lawyer in his own right, first doing insurance defense, and then “seeing the light” and becoming a plaintiff attorney after moving to the Phoenix, Arizona area. To this day, Dylan enjoys bouncing ideas off of James when they speak on the phone, which is fairly often. Dylan also points to an evidence professor at Seattle University Law School, Professor John Mitchell, for instilling in him a love for the law of evidence and how it applies to actual courtroom situations. One only needs to speak with Dylan for a short time before you realize that evidence is a topic that he cares deeply about and which he is very passionate about.

I look forward to hearing more about the cases that Dylan handles in the months and years ahead. Given that this was only Dylan’s second trial, it is clear that he has a very bright future!

Jay Krulewitch, EAGLE member, practices personal injury, civil rights, and criminal defense in Lake City, Seattle. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Trial News.