Clallam County lawyers & legal news
The Clallam County Courthouse Facilitator position is currently vacant. A new Facilitator will begin offering help with filling out court forms on March 1, 2026.
In the meantime, Port Angeles Pro Bono is offering limited Facilitator-type services. Click here for information and to apply for services
On Saturday, February 21 , 2026, the Clallam-Jefferson County Pro Bono Lawyers will provide a free legal aid clinic from 10-noon. The pro bono legal services are offered by phone or Zoom where you can speak to a lawyer and get free advice.
Lawyer availability is first come first served, so to ensure you can get an appointment, it is highly recommended that you pre-register in advance. Pre-registering will also help the pro bono office to collect any documents you may need the lawyer to review. Contact information is below.
Legal topics which can be discussed in these pro bono sessions may include:
Register in advance by calling 360-504-2422, or emailing [email protected].
The annual Clallam County CLE is on Friday, November 7th, in Sequim. Lunch is included with registration.
This year’s event features another outstanding lineup of presenters, including:
The CLE is hosted by the Clallam-Jefferson County Pro Bono Lawyers.
To register, contact Shauna or Mary at [email protected], or 360-504-2422.
8/28/2025
The brand new and experimental naval ship USX-1 Defiant is conducting sea trials in Port Angeles Harbor and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Defiant is a drone ship, the first ever designed to never operate with any human crew on board.
It is 180 feet long and is exceptionally narrow, shaped overall like a canoe. It sits very low in the water, its deck appears to be no more than 10 feet above the water line. It’s tower tops out at 42 feet tall. It has a top speed of 20 knots (23 MPH).
It can serve in roles of surveillance, logistics, attack and defense, carrying a 132,000 lbs load. That’s the equivalent of 24 Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs, or about 264 adult black bears and a load of Olympic blueberries to feed them.
Defiant can stay on a continuous sea patrol for one year. It uses marine diesel fuel. Long sea voyages require fueling at sea (FAS), which is problematic when there are no humans on board to safely receive and insert fueling hoses. This problem was addressed with specially designed FAS systems which require no humans on board the Defiant. A successful FAS trial was completed in December 2024.
Its sturdy and can conduct its mission in sea state 5 weather and higher, which are rough and windy seas with waves up to 13 feet. It can survive in sea state 7 weather, which has high seas and waives up to 30 feet. (Sea state 6 waves can go up to 20 feet, sea state 8 up to 46 feet and considered very high seas, and sea state 9 waves are anything over 46 feet high and phenomenal seas.)
Defiant was christened and launched on August 11, 2025, at the Everett Ship Repair in Everett, Washington. Serco is the prime contractor responsible to build the Defiant. It was built at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Washington State.
According to a DARPA spokesperson, Defiant was named after the USS Defiant, a starship in the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine. USS Defiant was small but might warship.
For the current sea trial, Defiant is being escorted by the workboat Melissa C. Here they are at rest on August 25, 2025, after a long day of work, preparing to dock for the night in Port Angeles.
In the morning, tethered together, Melissa C escorted Defiant out of dock.
A crewman on the Melissa C is seen on Defiant’s deck before the tether is withdrawn and Defiant is set free. The white structure on the left is part of the crane boom on Melissa C. Ediz Hook is in the immediate background, and the hills of Vancouver Island, BC, in the distant background.
Here, Defiant and Melissa C are engaged in sea trials in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The hills on Vancouver Island, BC, are in the background.
If you want to follow Defiant and Melissa C, you can find them on MarineTraffic.com.
The Defiant is not yet a Navy ship. As indicated by its call sign USX (rather than USN), it is an experimental craft. It’s truly experimental. At this point, it’s not known if it can carry out its mission. Defiant has just started the process of a one year true sea trial. It’s taking baby steps in Port Angeles Harbor.
The Defiant project was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
It’s part of the No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program. One goal of NOMARS is to increase American naval capacity at a much reduced cost. In 2025, the US Congress established a $2.1 billion budget for development and building of drone ships.
DARPA has developed many projects for the military, such as Vertical Take Off and Landing used in Boeing Osprey planes and next generation night vision goggles. They have also developed many projects that led to advances for regular citizens. DARPA developed ARPANET which was the first version of the internet, and the Aspen Movie Map which was the first version of products like Google Street View.
The Defiant is a unique ship because it’s the first fully autonomous vessel designed to never accommodate humans on board. DARPA and the Navy have already experimented with hybrid ships which can be operated as a drone or with humans on board. Those ships required all the facilities humans need including passageways everything needed for living quarters. Human needs take up a lot of space on a ship.
There are no passageways, sleep, cooking or other facilities for humans on board the Defiant. This allows the ship have its narrow design, low hull, and Long length. Narrow design allow ships to travel through water faster and with less energy needs, and to allow it to have a minimal wake.
The Defiant sits low in the water with a very low profile. Presumably this helps it minimize its exposure to radar and increase its stealth abilities.
It also has a simplified hull structure and ship design, so that new ships can be inexpensively built and maintained at any Tier III shipyards, which build smaller and specialized ships. Defiant class ships can be built at a Navy or private Tier III shipyard. Thus, any shipyard facility which can build a yacht, tug or workboat can build and service Defiant class ships. The Nichols Brother’s Boat Builder’s Washington facility is an example of a private company building a relatively low cost ship for our military.
The City of Port Angeles is in Washington State, in the top middle of the Olympic Peninsula. It is next to the northern boundary of Olympic National Park and sits on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Black Ball Transportation operates the M.V. Coho car ferry between Port Angeles and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Port Angeles is about 80 miles (by the ferry route) north and west of Seattle.
Here is Defiant and M.V. Coho, with Vancouver Island, BC, in the background.
The Strait of Juan de Fuca is primarily bordered by the southern end of Vancouver and the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. It’s about 96 miles long, about 12-25 miles wide, and is part of the Salish Sea, and was filled with glaciers up to a mile thick in the last Ice Age. The Salish Sea is all the inland water in the picture below. It extends up into British Columbia and down into Washington State.
Port Angeles Harbor is home to the Lower Elwha Tribe of the S’Klallam Coast Salish people. In 1791 Spanish explorer Francisco de Eliza entered the harbor and named it Puerto de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Port of Our Lady of the Angels). It’s considered the best deep water harbor in all of the Pacific coast Americas, including North, Middle and South America. It’s protected by a naturally formed sand spit called Ediz Hook.
A special thanks to DARPA public affairs for their help with this article.
https://www.darpa.mil/news/features/nomars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA#Past_or_transitioned_projects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Juan_de_Fuca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Angeles,_Washington
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klallam_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Elwha_Klallam_Tribe
By Mark Baumann
This article is a ClallamCountyBar.com local feature article.
Law is an important service to the health of our community. Parenting is even more important.
There are quite a few species of blueberries in the Olympic Mountains. A number of plant identification books describe them, but somewhat confusingly they don’t all describe the same list. So how many are there? Most importantly, which species is the tastiest, that’s what we really want to know?
First of all, scientists organize blueberries into the Vaccinium genus, a member of the heath family (Ericaceae). Red huckleberries are part of this family, so even though they are red, they in the blueberry, or Vaccinium family. (There’s a black one too.)
6 are specifically identified by Doug Benoliel, author of Northwest Foraging: A guide to edible plants of the Pacific Northwest (1974). He identifies red and blue huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium and Vaccinium membranaceum, respectively). Other authors call Vaccinium membranaceum a black huckleberry. A third one is bog cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos), although others say this is a cranberry, not a blueberry. The fourth is evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium Ovatum) which lives in the coastal forests, and makes a lovely ornamental plant, as it never loses its leaves. The sixth one Doug identifies is Grouseberry (Vaccinium scoparium), or whortleberry, as being in the blueberry family, but its probably only in the Cascade mountains, not the Olympics. He says that in total, there are 12 species of blueberries in the northwest.
8 according Douglas Deur, in his book Pacific Northwest Foraging (2014). He identifies the lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) as a type of cranberry, but within the blueberry family. He thinks the bog huckleberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) is one of the sweetest blueberries.
9 according to Mark Turner and Phyllis Gustafson, authors of Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest (2006). Turner and Gustafson claim there is a Cascades blueberry which has two variants, Vaccinium caespitosum, and the larger variety as Vaccinium deliciosum. Deliciosum is Latin for delicious! (Is that one the best?)
One of the best books to identify Olympic Flowers, and to take hiking (it’s easy to carry), is Charles Stewart’s Wildflowers of the Olympics and Cascades (1988). It’s out of print, but you can still find it on Amazon.com. While he does a nice job with plant descriptions, pictures, and a brief historical note about most plants, and kept his book small for easy carrying, he doesn’t identify every flower or berry. He does identify two Vacciniums. He describes the oval-leaf huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum). And also what he calls a blue-leaf huckleberry (Vaccinium Deliciosum), his personal favorite.
8species (and two subspecies with the same common name), according to Pojar and MacKinnon, who seem to have the most technical and comprehensive book. At a hefty 528 pages, their book is Plants of the Pacific Northwest, revised (2014) (10 total authors). It covers Washington, Oregon, Alaska and British Columbia. Here’s their list:
Pojar and MacKinnon claim dwarf blueberry (vaccinium caespitosum) was the preferred blueberry by indigenous people. It also goes by the common names of Blue-leaved and Cascade huckleberry (and the scientific name Vaccinium deliciosum). The other authors above use one of these names, and they all seem to agree it’s best tasting blueberry. Dwarf blueberry is a good name, in my opinion, because they only grow to a maximum height of about 12 inches tall.
For me, the blueberries on the very short dwarf blueberry plants, 2-6 inches tall (in the picture above), are the best of the best. I’m going with the scientific name Vaccinium deliciosum because they are deliciousis, the sweetest of all! Maybe this is because they have been “pruned”, or eaten down, by the deer and bear, and perhaps their root systems are much larger than the plant. If so, it could be that these shorty plants can concentrate a lot of energy from their root systems into a few berries packed with a lot of fruit sugar.
The second runner up might be the black huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum). This tasty berry is not only sweet when fully ripe, it’s very juicy and one of the largest wild blueberries.
However you count them, there’s a lot of wild blue-black-red-orange Vaccinium berries up in them there hills. Most become ripe in July, August, and September (depending on variety and elevation). Finding, identifying, and eating wild blueberries is a great nature experience for kids, and an excellent SNACCMS activity for building moral fiber.
Cautionary notes:
Ripe berries are pretty easy to identify as being in the blueberry family once you get a sense of what a blueberry bush is like. All the blue and black berry varieties taste like a blueberry. To be certain, the best way to identify edible plants is usually by the flower description, using a good guide book. Charles Stewart’s and Doug Benoliel’s books are easy to slip into a day pack.
On the dwarf blueberries, especially the 2-6″ shorties, you’ll often notice deer and bear scat near these plants, so there may be a risk these berries have been exposed to other animal excrements. Washing before eating might be advisable.
When ripe, black bears of the Olympics seem to eat nothing but blueberries. At least according to their scat.
When these “blueberry poops” dry out, there’s nothing much left.
Be mindful of the black bears when you go to hunt for blueberries. Black bears are afraid of humans so they tend to run away if they see you. There are no grizzly or brown bears in the Olympics, which are definitely dangerous bears. We only have black bears.
What do you think? How many species can you find? Which one do you think is the sweetest. Drop us a note with your thoughts.
Law is an important service to the health of our community. Parenting is even more important.
By Mark Baumann
This article is a ClallamCountyBar.com local feature article.
A four-year-old child was attacked by a mountain lion on Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, at about 3:15 p.m. on July 20, 2025. The attack came while the family was walking on a popular trail. The child was airlifted to a Level 1 Trauma Center in Seattle. The extent of injuries have not been disclosed. The attack happened near the main Hurricane Ridge parking, near a popular viewpoint overlooking Victoria BC, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Olympic NP Rangers began searching for the cougar immediately following the incident. A canine team joined the search at approximately 5 p.m. the same day. Rangers located the cougar shortly after the canine team joined the effort. The cougar, which was collared, was dispatched the following morning.
A similar attack happened in 2023 in the Hurricane Ridge area. In 2024 a cougar stalked a woman near the top of the PJ Lake trail off Obstruction Point road.
The Clallam County Court Facilitator is Maria Malkasian. Her office is now in room 3003 at the courthouse, across the hall from Courtroom 3, the Family Court, 223 East 4th Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362. (The office used to be in room 212 in the historic courthouse.)
Office hours are Monday-Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to noon, and 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
On the last Thursday of each month, the Facilitator is in Forks.
To schedule an appointment, see the Court Facilitator web page.
On Saturday, July 19, 2025, the Clallam-Jefferson County Pro Bono Lawyers will provide a free legal aid clinic from 10-noon. The pro bono legal services are offered by phone or Zoom where you can speak to a lawyer and get free advice.
Lawyer availability is first come first served, so to ensure you can get an appointment, it is highly recommended that you pre-register in advance. Pre-registering will also help the pro bono office to collect any documents you may need the lawyer to review. Contact information is below.
Legal topics which can be discussed in these pro bono sessions may include:
Register in advance by calling 360-504-2422, or emailing [email protected].
Parent child contact problems (PCCP) is one of the most difficult challenges in family law cases. The Washington Chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) is holding it’s 10th annual conference to address the PCCP topic over Friday and optionally on Saturday, April 25-26, 2025.
Conference speakers are national experts Leslie Drozd and Barbara Fidler. They will focus on intermediate and advanced concepts and solutions to teach how to recognize the problem and intervene. They will also look at the complex challenges PCCP cases pose for family courts, family attorneys, parent educators, GALs, and mental health specialists who work with resist/refuse dynamics (RRD).
This session is for lawyers, judicial officers, forensic professionals, mental health specialists, and other people working in family law and dependency cases.
Dr. Drozd is a licensed psychologist who works clinically and forensically with families in the various stages of divorce, including families with parent-child contact problems, co-parenting therapy, family therapy, reintegration therapy, and parent coordination. She is part of a group of experts producing a 16-hour training for the AFCC: Advanced Issues in Family Law: Parent-Child Contact Problems.
Dr. Fidler is a psychologist in private practice who has more than 38 years of experience working with divorcing families. She has authored four books and many chapters and peer reviewed papers, including as guest co-editor of two special issues of the Family Court Review (FCR) on alienation (January 2010 and April 2020). She served on the AFCC task force that developed the Guideline for Parenting Coordinators in 2019.
Friday, April 25, 2025. 8:45-5:15. $325 for AFCC members, $375 for nonmembers, $225 for full-time WA county court personnel.
Saturday, April 26, 2025 9:30-12:30. $75. Topic is advanced interventions and solutions for PCCP cases. Friday conference registration required.
Both sessions at the Washington Athletic Club, Seattle
On Saturday, April 19th, 2025, the Clallam-Jefferson County Pro Bono Lawyers will provide a free legal aid clinic from 10-noon. The pro bono legal services are offered by phone or Zoom where you can speak to a lawyer and get free advice.
Lawyer availability is first come first served, so to ensure you can get an appointment, it is highly recommended that you pre-register in advance. Pre-registering will also help the pro bono office to collect any documents you may need the lawyer to review. Contact information is below.
Legal topics which can be discussed in these pro bono sessions may include:
Register in advance by calling 360-504-2422, or emailing [email protected].