$18.5 Million Settlement Reached in I-5 Motorcycle Crash Lawsuit
A Rochester motorcyclist was awarded an $18.5 million settlement in Lewis County Superior Court Wednesday in a lawsuit filed after he was critically injured in an April 2015 crash in a construction zone on Interstate 5 in Centralia.
The settlement is likely the largest settlement of its kind from the Washington State Department of Transportation in Lewis County’s history, said attorney Kirk Bernard, of Bernard Law Group, PLLC in Seattle, representing Scott Bliss.
“It’s an extraordinary amount of money,” said Superior Court Judge James Lawler Wednesday, before he approved the settlement. “Of course, there were extraordinary injuries and that makes sense.”
The lawsuit, filed in June 2015, also named WSDOT’s contractor, Scarsella Bros. Inc, and the dump truck driver, Wesley Snelson.
Bernard spoke about