Arthur D. Swanson

On January 28 2023, we lost our founding law partner and former WSAJ (then WSTLA) President Art Swanson. Despite his "retirement" in the late 1990s, Art was involved with the work and life of our firm on a weekly basis and we will all dearly miss his love and guidance.

In addition to serving as WSTLA President in the early 1970s, Art was a frequent and respected CLE speaker and worked with Dan Sullivan to organize the Amicus program. In the 1990s, Art helped launch the WSAJ Foundation. Gerhard Letzing recalls that Art (a lifelog “car guy”) was also responsible for the most unique charitable donation to the organization – a Volkswagen “Thing” which was later sold to benefit the organization.

Art attended Valley High School (now Willapa Valley Middle School) in Raymond where he played basketball and football despite contracting polio at the age of 15, which compromised one of his legs. As a sophomore in high school, Art had the good fortune to take a biology class taught by attorney James Duree, who was waiting to take the state bar exam. Mr. Duree inspired Art become a lawyer.

Art went straight to Washington State University out of high school and graduated in 1956. He was in the Air Force ROTC, but served in the US Army after the Air Force washed him out because of his leg. In the Army, Art proved to be a talented rifleman and made the Fourth Army Rifle Team, competing in the nationals at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. He was proud of his military service, and the walls of his office here at the firm have always displayed his medals and other momentos of his time in the Army.

Art worked for a short time as an insurance adjuster for Crawford & Company before attending law school at the University of Washington, graduating in 1963. He then served in the King County Prosecutor’s Office, working for Charles O. Carroll where he met several attorneys who became lifelong friends, including Bill Kinzel and Fred Meyers. Later, Art left and worked as a partner in firms with Gerry Shellan and Stan Stone.

Then, in about 1965, Art decided to open his own solo plaintiffs’ personal injury office in Renton. In 1971, the Law Office of Arthur D. Swanson moved to a small brick house just south of Valley Medical Center on Talbot Road South. We remain in the same location, in the second building to be constructed on the original site, as Swanson Gardner Meyers Cohon.

By the early 1970s, Art had moved his solo practice to a small brick house at the present location of our firm on Talbot Road in Renton, just down the street from what is now Valley Medical Center. Always a personal injury practice since its early days, Art also developed important and valued relationships with the law enforcement community, including the Renton Police Department and the Washington State Patrol.

Art’s relationships with his employees reflect these early lessons in the business of law. From the firm’s founding, Art created a culture here that values hardworking, conscientious, loyal employees who we treat as family. He believed, as we do, in giving our legal staff the responsibility and authority to get things done for our clients. Art was a wonderful listener and gave his time and attention generously.

Art was a talented trial attorney and earned many honors during the course of his 60-year legal career. In addition to his longtime support and service to this organization, Art was an invited member of the Damages Attorneys Roundtable, the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Board of Trial Advocates. The Washington Chapter of ABOTA honored Art with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. Throughout his career Art was also a strong supporter of women lawyers at a time when far too few women were part of the trial bar.

But Art was most proud of building a successful law practice from nothing and successfully representing hundreds of individual clients over the course of his long career. Many of those clients kept in touch with Art and the firm for decades after their cases concluded. Art was a lifelong advocate in every sense of that word and he treasured his colleagues and friends in the legal profession. Despite stepping away from trial work in the 1990s, he never lost his love for the legal practice or his interest in our cases and our work and the many interesting characters that work involves.