News & Publications

Our Firm has taken the Pledge to Stay Safe to Stay Open! Here is a link where you can take the Pledge too: Stay Open Utah

Dewsnup King Olsen Worel Havas Mortensen takes the health and safety of its employees and its clients very seriously.  We are doing our part to keep everyone safe and to contribute to the community’s efforts to do the same, while remaining available to serve our clients.  Our office is open, with enhanced precautions and sanitation measures to prevent contact with, or the spread of, the coronavirus.  The following measures have been implemented for the safety of our employees and visitors. We check employee temperatures regularly, require frequent hand-cleansing and sanitization, disinfect high touch surfaces frequently, provide face masks, maintain social distancing, and limit the size of groups gathering in the office.  All visitors will be screened for recent illness or exposure, have their temperatures checked, and be asked to sanitize their hands and wear a face mask.  Masks are available for any visitor who needs one.  Using these measures we…

Red Onion Salmonella Outbreak Sickens 90 in Utah, DKOW’s Salt Lake City Lawyers Are Here to Help Salt Lake City’s premier plaintiff’s trial law firm, DKOW, has teamed up with The Lange Law Firm’s National Salmonella Lawyer to help Utahn’s injured in the Red Onion Salmonella Outbreak.  The Salmonella Onion Outbreak has sickened 90 people in Utah.  Nationally 640 people have been infected with Salmonella from onions.  85 people have been hospitalized.  People from all across the United States and Canada have called our Salmonella Lawyer about the Onion outbreak. Utah Red Onion Salmonella Outbreak Will Continue to Grow At least 90 people in Utah have contracted Salmonella from red onions. Salmonella Lawyer Jory Lange says, "This is already the biggest Salmonella outbreak of 2020.  It is likely to continue to grow.  Thompson International recalled its contaminated onions just last Friday.  Many people still have these recalled onions in their homes.  There's a real…

The firm brought a law suit on behalf of Salt Lake County against Volkswagen for damages caused by its tampering with emissions controls on its diesel vehicles from 2008 to 2015.  Its tampering caused VW cars to emit up to 40 times more nitrogen oxides than the law allowed, in one of the jurisdictions with the worst air quality in the United States.  The case was consolidated with other cases in a multi-district litigation in the Northern District of California.  The federal district court threw the case out, finding that the County’s claims were preempted by federal law.  The County appealed, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed, reinstating Salt Lake County’s claims.  Colin King and Paul Simmons represented the County.  They were joined in the appeal by Peter Stris and John Stokes of the California firm Stris & Maher.

DKOWH, along with co-counsel, successfully settled a very difficult and hotly contested trucking collision case against a Utah trucking company and its truck driver. The collision resulted in the death of a 67-year old man, and was settled in the amount of $2 million.

DKOWHM is honored to work with Alan Mortensen and Lance Milne, who favorably resolved a Utah wrongful death case of the loss of a minor child in the amount of $2,000,000.

DKOWHM congratulates Alan Mortensen and Christopher Cheney for their settlement of a trucking case. The crash happened on I-80, and after months of litigation, they settled for $1.1 million in the Wyoming Federal District Court. 

DKOWHM just conducted its first arbitration fully by Zoom.  In order to stay ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, the parties agreed to an arbitration process where all the witnesses testified from their homes while the attorneys participated from their offices. DKOWHM is committed to being on the forefront of providing its clients access to justice during this pandemic.

DKOWHM partner Paul Simmons recently spent 2 weeks in Poland teaching a legal seminar on advocacy, a topic that is not generally covered in basic legal education in Europe. Through Paul’s career, he has been named Pro Bono Attorney of the Year, Mentor of the Year, and Lawyer of the Year. We are proud to have Paul as part of our team, and watch him continue to positively influence the legal field.

Dewsnup King Olsen Worel Havas Mortensen is proud to announce that Ralph Dewsnup, former president and founding member of the firm, has been inducted as a Life Fellow in the American Bar Foundation. The Foundation is a longstanding organization, established in 1955, in which membership is by invitation only. This remarkable honor is bestowed on only a few deserving candidates. The Fellows encompass a global honorary society of attorneys, judges, and other legal professionals whose public and private careers have proven outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession and to the well-being of their communities. We congratulate Ralph on this distinct honor.

DKOW Shareholders Michael Worel and Colin King obtained a $2.7 million jury verdict on behalf of their client Lois Smith against Southtowne in June 2018. Ms. Smith was diagnosed with various types of brain injuries after getting carbon monoxide smoke poisoning from her car.  

Dewsnup, King, Olsen, Worel, Havas, Mortensen is proud to announce that DKOW President Edward B. Havas was named the 2018 Lawyer of the Year for Personal Injury Litigation in Salt Lake City, Utah. Only one lawyer in each practice area in each community is honored as "Lawyer of the Year".