About Us

Welcome to our website. We recently changed our name from Rumbaugh Rideout Barnett & Adkins to Rumbaugh Rideout Adkins & Wallace. The name change reflects the retirement of Terry Barnett and the addition of John Wallace as a partner of the firm.

Our firm first opened its doors over 30 years ago in Tacoma, Washington. Since that time, we have been whole heartedly dedicated to serving working families in the Pacific Northwest. We have four attorneys and 11 support staff working for you. Our practice focuses on workers compensation, personal injury, wrongful death, insurance, and social security claims. Our philosophy has always been to provide personal, quality, and aggressive representation for individuals who have been harmed by the wrongdoing of others.

We understand that our clients are facing some of the most difficult times in their life.
They want to be listened to. They want to have the peace of mind and assurance that their claim is being handled with integrity and professionalism. They want to be assured that the responsible party will be held accountable.

Our goal is for every client’s case to be resolved through settlement or litigation to their complete satisfaction. In fact, our business model is to rely, nearly exclusively, on word of mouth for our advertising.
Approximately 98% of our business is from referrals, which is why we rarely purchase advertising. Our many satisfied current and former clients are our advertisements.

We also pride ourselves in developing creative approaches to problem solving. We have developed new legal theories and strategies that result in extreme benefits to our clients. For example, in one of many Supreme Court decisions we have obtained, the Court ruled in our favor by accepting our analysis of the law, overturning decades of overreaching by the government. That Supreme Court decision has helped virtually every injured worker in our State. Now, the Department of Labor and Industries must compensate injured workers for the loss of their health care benefits that resulted from an on-the-job injury. See Cockle v. Dep’t of Labor & Indus., 142 Wn.2d 801.

We also came up with a new theory that would allow our client to obtain a higher interest rate on money owed to her by an insurance company. Just months before our case went to the Court of Appeals in Seattle, that Court ruled that the interest rate on unpaid underinsured motorist benefits was a low 3% rate. See Mercier v. GEICO Indemnity Co., 139 Wn. App. 891. We convinced the Court of Appeals to reverse its prior decision and hold that the higher 12% contract rate applied, resulting in additional interest money to our client. See Little v. King, 147 Wn. App 883. This was particularly important in light of the fact we had obtained a $2.1 million judgment for our client that the insurance company refused to pay for four years while we litigated the case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court affirmed our judgment.

In another landmark case, we litigated the first same-sex meretricious relationship case to the State Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sided with us, and we were able to obtain a fair division of property for our client, and establish the rights of individuals regardless of sexual orientation.

If you are looking for personalized, aggressive, quality, and effective representation, please give us a call today – [253] 756-0333