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Washington: Employer Chooses Incorrect Subsection in Rule 12 Motion to Dismiss

September 16, 2019 (1 min read)

A defendant's contention that as an employer it was immune from tort liability in a civil action filed against it by an employee did not speak to the Washington trial court's subject matter jurisdiction, held a state appellate court. Accordingly, its motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) was improperly granted by the trial court. Following a lengthy procedural discussion, the appellate court held that the trial court should either have treated the motion as a Rule 12(b)(6) motion [e.g., for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted] or denied the Rule 12(b)(1) on its merits.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Boudreaux v. Weyerhaeuser Co., 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 2262 (Aug. 26, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 100.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see



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