Baker Sterchi Lawyers Uphold Huge Sanction Award in Climbing Gym Case

Baker Sterchi attorneys Bob Christie and John Barry, Seattle, obtained a big win in the Washington State Court of Appeals, Div. 1 in Seattle. They represented a climbing gym facility, the first of its kind in the country.

The Case Against the Gym and Manufacturer

One of the devices used in the gym is called an auto-belay, which allows a climber to be safely arrested if he or she falls while climbing solo. The manufacturer, a co- defendant, was the focus of a suit brought by a gym member that fell and was injured. Investigation into the fall suggested that the auto-belay device failed to properly brake.

With a fault-free plaintiff, the risk to the climbing gym in the event it was found to have any degree of fault, however small, was the imposition of joint and several liability under Washington law. The manufacturer had a $4 million excess policy in addition to its $1 million primary layer, providing significant protection for our client. However, the excess insurer rescinded the policy for misrepresentation, something their lawyers failed to disclose in discovery for months as the parties prepared for a multi-week trial.

Pre-Trial Developments

When new counsel came in for the manufacture on the eve of trial, she immediately saw the failure on the part of her predecessors and supplemented plaintiff’s discovery questions about available insurance coverage. Our client’s exposure risk jumped up dramatically.

Resolution for Our Client

We reached out to plaintiff’s counsel and immediately settled the claims against our client for its $1 million policy limits. We then teamed up with plaintiff’s counsel and directed our focus on the manufacturer and its prior counsel, filing sanction motions against them seeking to recover all our fees and costs incurred in the months before trial. Our argument was straightforward: we would have reached the identical settlement months earlier had we known of the rescission, given the increased risk to our client, who otherwise had a solid defense.

Trial Court Sanctions

The trial court granted both our sanction motions, awarding our client over $200,000 in fees. At our urging the court set our rate equal to that of plaintiff’s counsel, using a lodestar analysis that looked at reasonable rates, not capped at our panel counsel rates. The court also rejected the argument that we could not rely on plaintiff’s discovery request seeking insurance policy information from the manufacturer.

Appeal and Final Outcome