attached to her helmet, which captured the collision, kept a daily journal of every single symptom, including mild aches, and kept spreadsheets showing every medical appointment. I feared her compulsive recordkeeping could portray her negatively. When I learned her husband was a tax lawyer, I decided at arbitration to ask her, “So does that explain all the documentation?” It was a dumb joke but helped to address the issue and dispel my concern. Speaking of dumb jokes, I once watched attorney Greg Kafoury during jury selection, after learning a potential juror went to Harvard, say: “It’s been said that people who went to Harvard will tell you that fact within two minutes of meeting them. Of course, you were provoked.” It did a great job of breaking the ice and I can imagine it’s not the first time he’s told it. Legal Writing Jim Coon and my dad Ray Thomas began practicing together in 1991. Coon once described Thomas as “a small ship with a lot of sail,” an apt description of his willingness to hard charge into a case he thought was right, but perhaps without fully appreciating the underlying legal principles. Those were Coon’s purview and, over the years, he has earned the reputation as one of the great appellate lawyers and writers in our state’s history. In 2021, I filed a premises liability case in Wasco County for a client who slipped and fell on ice at work, at a property owned by an affiliate of her employer. After the injury, the property owner conveyed its assets and liabilities to the employer and ceased to exist, leaving only the employer as a viable, solvent defendant. The employer moved for summary judgment, on the basis of Oregon’s workers’ compensation exclusive remedy protection. The employer argued they were immune from suit, even though they were a party to the case not as an employer, but as a company that assumed the liabilities of the defendant. I sent the motion to Coon, whose response brief included the following: Defendant Employer relies on ORS 656.018, the workers’ compensation exclusivity statute. It provides, in relevant part, as follows: (1)(a) The liability of every employer who satisfies the duty [to provide workers’ compensation insurance to its workers] is exclusive and in place of all other liability arising out of injuries, diseases, symptom complexes or similar conditions arising out of and in the course of employment that are sustained by subject workers, the workers’ beneficiaries and anyone otherwise entitled to recover damages from the employer on account of such conditions or claims resulting therefrom, specifically including claims for contribution or indemnity asserted by third persons from whom damages are sought on account of such conditions, except as specifically provided otherwise in this chapter. What We Can Learn from Our OTLA Peers p. 40 39 Trial Lawyer | Fall 2024
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