Spokane County Superior Court judge candidate is sued for legal malpractice. Was it an honest mistake, or an indicator of future behavior?

A candidate trying to unseat a Spokane judge this election is being sued for legal malpractice by a former client.

Despite her the lawsuit, the woman who is suing the candidate is endorsing his candidacy.

Spokane attorney Brandon Casey, who has been practicing in the area since 2004, is challenging incumbent Spokane Superior Court Judge Marla Polin for the court’s Position 8 in the Nov. 5 election. Casey’s former client, Elissa Aguilar, filed a lawsuit against him this summer in Walla Walla alleging he failed to progress her case.

Even though she is suing him, Aguilar claims he “owned his mistake” and that he “did all he could.”

“One of my big things is accountability,” Casey said. “Part of that is acknowledging the wrong that’s been done (and) making up for it however you can.”

His election opponent Polin said the issue should concern voters.

“Why should the public have confidence (in him) if he couldn’t properly maintain his own caseload?” she said. “You have a larger caseload as a judge.”

The lawsuit against Casey stems from a 2015 case. At the time, Casey represented Aguilar in taking action against a local doctor for medical malpractice. Aguilar alleged the doctors performed a different type of surgery on her than the one she consented to, she told The Spokesman-Review.

Aguilar’s medical malpractice case lasted eight years – partly because Casey did not stay on top of the case, according to records. The 2024 lawsuit accuses Casey of allowing his client’s case to become stagnant while it was set for trial, which, to Aguilar’s disappointment, led to its dismissal in 2020.

Under Washington law, a judge can dismiss a case if the plaintiff and their attorneys fail to bring any action in the case after a year.

It took Casey another year to realize the case was dismissed and “discover his error,” the lawsuit alleges. He then asked the court to vacate its previous dismissal motion, but it was denied. Washington’s court of appeals affirmed the denial in 2023, records show.

An opinion from the Washington Court of Appeals acknowledges Casey never received the notices – his receptionist, who handles incoming legal filings, had quit due to stress from the COVID-19 pandemic, the opinion states. When Casey hired a temporary receptionist, that receptionist misfiled the dismissal notice and never notified Casey, he said.

“I didn’t even know what came through to our office. That was the problem. There’s different binders that relate to different things and it got misfiled in our binder system,” Casey said. “Anything comes in is shown to an attorney, initialed, scanned, emailed out and then goes into the hard copy. This went directly from the desk into the wrong hard copy file.”

Casey also said nobody called him and no one from Walla Walla questioned him about the lack of response, either. He never reached out to anyone to ask why he wasn’t receiving legal notices because the courts were in the process of rebooking trials due to COVID-19, there were conflicts with expert witnesses and he didn’t have a scheduling order from a judge at the time, he said.

“That being said, that person was acting as my employee, so that makes me accountable,” Casey added. “… That was on me, that was my office that made the mistake.”

The court of appeals praised Casey for being forthright on the issue. In the opinion, the court wrote, “We applaud Casey for his honesty.”

But, the court also criticized Casey. The internal failure to “forward process” was “inexcusable” and the pandemic was not an excuse to hire a replacement incapable of completing integral tasks, the court wrote in their opinion.

Casey said the process is a great example of what needs to be addressed in the justice system. Clients are waiting years for their cases to be resolved and the county can do better, he said, which is part of the reason why he is running. But Polin said the lawsuit and the lack of action for a medical malpractice case “goes against his entire platform” and should cause concern if Casey were to be elected.

“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior,” she said.

For example, Polin said, if she were to take something under advisement, or take time for review before making a decision, she’d have to make that decision within 90 days. If she somehow forgot about the case and missed the deadline, it would violate the judge’s code of conduct and potentially be an issue for the state bar.

So was it an honest mistake? To Polin, it doesn’t matter.

“The law is the law,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, it’s your responsibility.”

To Aguilar, anyone who owns up to their mistakes is “worthy of being endorsed” even though the notification her case had been dismissed due to lack of action by Casey was extremely upsetting at the time.

Casey reached out after the case was dismissed and told her he would appeal, she said, but if it didn’t go in his favor, he encouraged her to file a legal malpractice lawsuit against him.

“He stepped up and did the best he could. He told me exactly what happened. He owned it, and that’s a tough thing for people to do … It’s a tough situation when you have to file malpractice against an attorney,” she said. “It happened during COVID and we had a lot of things going on … Things happen.”

After her case led by Casey was dismissed, Aguilar hired a different attorney and received a settlement for her medical malpractice claims.