In Our Voices by Deena Sajitharan “In Our Voices” is a column published in each edition of Trial Lawyer featuring members from underrepresented communities and their personal stories. These personal stories focus on adversity encountered, perceptions, general thoughts with the hope of bringing awareness to the larger legal community. During a visit to our homeland, Sri Lanka, when I was barely a few months old, my mother held me close to her chest against the backdrop of bombs exploding as she ran away from government soldiers, artillery and tanks. The very beginning moments of my life were anything but peaceful. British imperialism in Sri Lanka resulted in decades-long civil war, which began in 1983 and ended in 2009. The ethnic unrest on the island was caused primarily by tensions between the Sinhalese, the majority, and Tamils, a small minority, to which my family and I belong. Although my family and I returned safely to Nigeria, our new homebase, the same can’t be said about the approximately hundred thousand Sri Lankan Tamils who were killed during the civil unrest, including my father’s sibling. I was born in Lagos, Nigeria and lived most of my childhood in America, but my passport reads “Sri Lanka.” For most of my life, I lacked a true sense of national identity. A few years after graduating college, I took my Oath of Allegiance and became a United States citizen. That process was pivotal in shaping my desire to pursue law. I not only began to identify myself with one nation, the United States, but I also began to recognize the ways in which the laws of a nation vastly affect the lives of its citizens. From a young age, I knew I wanted to commit myself to a career with the primary objective of acting in the service of others. My earliest memories are filled with trips to the hospital to attend to various health issues associated with my mother’s pregnancy with my younger sister. As a young girl, it was hard not to internalize my mother’s struggles. I only wanted to make things easier for her. My father did too. He had already dedicated his entire adult life to improving the lives of his family members and his immediate family by working in Saudi Arabia to provide for his mother, brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka, and furthering his education in England. After first settling in Nigeria, where we lived for eight years, my father then relocated our immediate family — my mother, sister and I — to the United States as the foreshadowing of civil unrest in Nigeria began to take shape; a story he was already far too familiar with. In August of 1993, we landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. We had finally arrived to the cliched “land of opportunity”. My initial academic interests began with the pursuit of medicine and science. I worked for six years as a medical researcher studying autoimmune diseases, cancer, heart disease, traumatic brain injury and addiction. Medical science can have far-reaching effects, but the work often felt abstract and impersonal. Even in scientific pursuits, laws govern not only how progress is made, but also how it is applied. Just as I understood medicine to be a tool that can be used to improve lives, I came to understand the same truth in the law. Looking back on our time in Nigeria, I can clearly see how many of my mother’s health issues were prolonged by her inability to receive adequate and proper treatment, which Nigeria’s poor medical infrastructure simply could not provide at that time. Medical professionals are a vital part of society, but their efficacy is tied to the laws governing that society — a fact reflected by the current discussion of health care reform in our own national discourse. This ability of the law to affect lives on a macro level was the biggest driving force behind my decision to enter the legal field, specifically the field of medical malpractice and civil rights. “Education is power.” These are words my father often repeated to me as a child and continues to repeat to this day. DEENA D. SAJITHARAN practices exclusively in plaintiff’s personal injury. She specializes in medical malpractice and civil rights cases, as well as pedestrian and bicyclist injuries. She is an associate in the firm of Pickett Dummigan Weingart LLP, located at The Centennial Block, 210 SW Morrison St., 4th Floor, Portland, OR 97204. She can be reached at deena@pdw.legal and 503-575-9731. 14 Trial Lawyer | Winter 2025
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