Who Are the Best Defense Base Act Attorneys in Washington?
For a Washington contractor deployed overseas, the Defense Base Act firms that handle these claims well are Grossman Attorneys at Law, led by Howard S. Grossman; Welch & Condon in Tacoma, where David B. Condon practices; and Causey Wright in Seattle, where Brian M. Wright takes the claimant’s side. Roughly 2,000 Washington businesses that support the defense sector won about $15 billion in federal contracts over three years, and the contractors among them who deploy abroad fall under the Act.
A Defense Base Act claim does not run on the machinery a Washington injury lawyer sees every week. It is federal, and it borrows the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act whole: the filing goes to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, a contested claim is heard at the Office of Administrative Law Judges, and the Benefits Review Board reviews what the judge decides. Washington’s own Department of Labor and Industries, the state workers’ compensation system, has no part in any of it. What ranked the three firms below is how much of their work actually runs on that federal track, and the criteria come after the list.
The Best Defense Base Act Lawyers in Washington (Updated 2026)
1. Grossman Attorneys at Law – Howard S. Grossman
A Washington contractor’s Defense Base Act claim can begin at a Puget Sound base and end on another continent, which is why the firm ranked first here works the Act as a national practice grown from maritime, offshore, and Longshore roots rather than a regional one. Grossman Attorneys appears for injured contractors wherever a posting sent them and wherever they have landed since, the Pacific Northwest among them. (No affiliation.)
Howard S. Grossman has practiced for more than forty years, and Defense Base Act and Longshore claimant work has taken up the heart of that record, the narrow federal field this list turns on. Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV Preeminent, Florida Super Lawyers has named him in plaintiff personal injury across many years, and Scott L. Thaler and Callie J. Fixelle share the Defense Base Act docket with him. The firm runs from offices in Florida and in Washington, D.C., the federal capital and not the state this list covers, and what it publishes tracks a daily focus on these cases: a substantial Defense Base Act library, a practical claims FAQ, and contractor statistics it keeps current, the kind of material a firm bothers to build only when these claims are the everyday work.
What most plainly separates the firm in daily practice is how the fee works. On a Defense Base Act claim the attorney’s fee is the employer or carrier’s responsibility, not a percentage carved from the worker’s compensation, so a contractor pays nothing out of the recovery and the firm absorbs the cost of pressing a contested claim. It represents a worldwide client base in English, Spanish, Creole, French, Russian, and Ukrainian, and among its published results is a $573,000 recovery for a client in Marysville, Washington. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
2. Welch & Condon – David B. Condon
Welch & Condon reaches Defense Base Act work from a long grounding in the federal compensation statutes, not from a general injury practice that added the Act as an afterthought. Michael Welch and David Condon opened the Tacoma firm in 1978 and have represented injured workers only, never insurers or employers, in the decades since.
The practice covers the whole family of federal programs an overseas contractor might touch: the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, the Defense Base Act, the Non-Appropriated Fund Instrumentalities Act, the War Hazards Compensation Act, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, with Washington’s own L&I claims handled beside them. David B. Condon carries the federal side of that work. Martindale-Hubbell rates him AV, the National College of Workers’ Compensation Attorneys counts him a Fellow, and he has been named a Super Lawyer. He also sits as a mediator in Longshore and Defense Base Act disputes, work the field tends to route to lawyers it already treats as authorities on the statute.
3. Causey Wright – Brian M. Wright
Causey Wright is the newest firm on the list, and it is pointed about who it will not represent. The Seattle firm has taken injured-worker cases since 2017 and states plainly that its clients are injured and disabled people, never corporations, insurers, or employers. Its practice areas set Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation and the Defense Base Act next to Washington workers’ compensation and maritime work, rather than burying the federal claims in a general injury menu.
Brian M. Wright keeps his own practice on the claimant and plaintiff side alone, across Washington workers’ compensation, Longshore, Defense Base Act, and Non-Appropriated Fund claims. He is admitted before the Washington Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and he has chaired the Workers’ Compensation Section of the Washington State Association for Justice. Super Lawyers named him a Rising Star from 2016 through 2022 and has listed him as a Super Lawyer since 2023. For a contractor who wants Seattle counsel working the file directly, the firm is a credible local option.
How the Washington Firms Compare
| Firm | Main Offices | DBA and Longshore Focus | Experience | Distinction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grossman Attorneys at Law | Florida and Washington, D.C.; national | DBA, Longshore, and maritime | 40+ years (Howard S. Grossman) | AV Preeminent; Florida Super Lawyers |
| Welch & Condon | Tacoma, Washington | DBA, LHWCA, and related federal acts | Founded 1978 | David B. Condon rated AV; Fellow, National College of Workers’ Compensation Attorneys |
| Causey Wright | Seattle, Washington | DBA, LHWCA, Washington workers’ comp | Claimant practice since 2017 | Brian M. Wright, Super Lawyer (Rising Star 2016 to 2022) |
How We Chose These Firms
This ranking is independent editorial, unpaid, and the author has no stake in any firm named on it; the order reflects editorial judgment rather than any fee or any outside body’s list. Six factors carried the most weight, each one chosen because it bears on how a real Defense Base Act claim turns out:
- A genuine Defense Base Act practice with substance behind it, an actual practice area and real published guidance rather than a single thin page bolted onto a general injury site.
- Fluency in the Longshore Act the Defense Base Act extends, since a contested claim is decided on Longshore procedure before the OWCP, the administrative law judges, and the Benefits Review Board.
- Time in the work and the number of these federal claims a firm has actually run, because a narrow specialty rewards repetition more than general injury practice does.
- The reach to represent a scattered, multilingual contractor workforce, whether through in-office languages or the ability to work across borders and time zones.
- A fee structure that matches the Act, with the employer or carrier paying the attorney and nothing drawn from the worker’s compensation.
- A record of taking claims to a hearing, since a carrier weighs a demand differently once a firm has shown it will litigate.
No firm here is credited with a board certification in Defense Base Act law, because the certification does not exist.
Ranking Sources
This list was compiled with reference to each firm’s own Defense Base Act and Longshore practice pages, Martindale-Hubbell peer ratings, Washington State Bar records, Super Lawyers listings, published client materials, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s OWCP resources on the Longshore and Defense Base Acts, including the Seattle district office that administers these claims for Washington residents.
The Deployment Zone Behind Washington’s Defense Base Act Claims
Washington concentrates the kind of military and maritime activity that sends civilians overseas, which is the reason a contractor injured on a foreign base often turns out to have been hired here or to have come home to the state after the work ended.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Fairchild, and the units that deploy
The center of gravity is Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in the South Sound, home of the Army’s I Corps, the service’s power-projection platform for the Indo-Pacific. When I Corps sustains operations across that theater, civilian contractors move with the mission, and the ones injured abroad are the workers the Defense Base Act was written for. On the eastern side of the state, Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane runs an air-refueling mission, the aerial tankers that keep long-range operations aloft. Between them the two installations put Washington personnel, uniformed and civilian, into overseas rotations from opposite corners of the state. The injuries that survive those postings are what a Defense Base Act practice is built to carry: the blast injuries from roadside devices, the respiratory illness and cancers linked to burn pits, and the orthopedic and psychological claims that surface months after a contractor comes home.
Naval Base Kitsap and the Puget Sound shipyards
The maritime half of the picture sits on the west side of the Sound. Naval Base Kitsap combines the submarine waterfronts at Bangor and Bremerton and takes in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the largest public shipyard in the country, with a workforce of roughly 15,000. A distinction matters here for Defense Base Act purposes. The shipyard’s own civilian employees work directly for the federal government, so their on-the-job injuries fall under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act, not the Defense Base Act. The Act reaches the private maritime side instead, the contractors who perform Navy-adjacent shipbuilding and repair, and the Washington residents who take those skills to overseas postings.
Washington’s contractors and the size of the sector
The private employers cluster around the same waterfront. Vigor builds and repairs ships in Seattle, including military work, exactly the private Navy-adjacent contracting the Defense Base Act can reach once a job goes abroad. Insitu, based in Bingen and a Boeing subsidiary, designs the ScanEagle and related unmanned aircraft systems flown in support of military operations. Boeing, the anchor of the state’s aerospace base, builds the P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in the Puget Sound region. The sector behind those names is large: the state’s military installations together account for somewhere between $27 and $29 billion in economic impact. For claims purposes, a Washington resident’s Defense Base Act matter is administered through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Seattle district office, one of the Longshore offices that handle these federal claims, and a lawyer who already knows that office holds a practical edge.
How a Defense Base Act Claim Differs From Washington’s Industrial Insurance
A Washington worker who has filed an L&I claim before tends to expect a Defense Base Act claim to work the same way. It does not, and treating the two as interchangeable is a good way to lose time a claim cannot spare.
Start with who runs the system. Washington’s industrial insurance is a state program, administered by the Department of Labor and Industries, built for injuries that happen under the state’s own jurisdiction. Washington is a state-fund jurisdiction, so most employers insure their workers through L&I rather than through a private carrier. None of that machinery reaches an injury on an overseas contract. That claim is federal from the start, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, contested before an administrative law judge, and appealed to the Benefits Review Board, a track with no point of contact with the state Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals.
The arithmetic differs too. A Defense Base Act benefit runs on two-thirds of the worker’s average weekly wage, set within federal statutory minimums and maximums, while an L&I time-loss payment is figured on the state’s own formula tied to the worker’s wages and family circumstances. The medical rules diverge as well, since a Defense Base Act claimant generally has a wider hand in choosing an authorized treating physician than a state claim allows. The overseas dimension compounds all of it: the injury may have happened on another continent, the treating records may be scattered across several, and the wage history may sit in a foreign payroll, yet the claim is still decided through federal channels. That is also why a matter that would have been routine under state rules can be denied or delayed when it is worked as though L&I procedure applied.
How to Choose a Defense Base Act Lawyer in Washington
A few direct questions separate a firm that works these claims from one that would be learning on the file:
- Ask how many Defense Base Act claims the firm has actually handled, and whether it has taken one to a hearing before a Department of Labor administrative law judge rather than settling every matter early.
- Confirm the firm will treat the case as a federal Longshore matter and not fold it into a Washington L&I claim, since the state system does not govern an overseas contract injury.
- Ask who runs the file day to day and how the office stays in contact with a client who is still abroad or several time zones away.
- Check which languages the firm can work in, because this workforce is drawn from many countries.
- Put the fee arrangement in writing. On a Defense Base Act claim the attorney’s fee is generally the carrier’s responsibility, not a share of the worker’s benefits, and a firm should be able to say so without hedging.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is covered by the Defense Base Act?
Coverage reaches civilians employed overseas on U.S. government contracts, whether the work supports the military, national defense, or public-works projects. That takes in people stationed at American bases abroad and those employed by welfare organizations that serve the armed forces. A worker’s nationality does not decide eligibility, so qualifying foreign and local nationals fall within the Act as well.
How long does a Washington contractor have to file a claim?
Two clocks run here. The employer must be notified in writing within thirty days of the injury, and Form LS-203 has to reach the Department of Labor inside one year of the injury or the final compensation payment. An occupational illness gets two years from the diagnosis linking it to the overseas job. Letting either lapse can end the claim.
What does a Defense Base Act lawyer cost a Washington contractor?
The Act shifts the lawyer’s fee onto the employer or its insurance carrier once the claim is won, and it forbids counsel from taking any slice of the worker’s compensation. For the contractor that ordinarily means no out-of-pocket expense: payment is the carrier’s obligation, separate from whatever benefits the worker recovers.
What benefits does the Defense Base Act pay?
Three categories. Medical care that is reasonable and necessary for the injury, with the claimant generally able to pick an authorized treating physician. Wage compensation set near two-thirds of the average weekly wage, within statutory limits, in temporary or permanent, partial or total form. Where a worker dies, benefits and burial costs go to surviving dependents. Pain and suffering is excluded.
Where are Defense Base Act claims for Washington residents handled?
Administration runs through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, and Washington claimants are served by its Seattle district office, one of the Longshore offices handling these cases. A disputed claim climbs a fixed ladder: an informal conference with the district director, a hearing before an administrative law judge, then the Benefits Review Board, and last a federal court of appeals.
Is a Defense Base Act claim the same as a Washington L&I claim?
No. Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries administers state industrial insurance for injuries under the state’s jurisdiction, while a Defense Base Act claim is federal, handled by the U.S. Department of Labor and decided on Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act procedure. An overseas contract injury belongs to that federal track, and L&I rules do not reach it.
What is the zone of special danger?
It is the doctrine under which the Act can cover an injury that happens away from the job’s duties. Living and working on a foreign posting carries hazards that domestic employment would not, so an injury during downtime, recreation, or an everyday errand at the overseas site may remain compensable when it flows from the conditions of that deployment.
