Water Witch Wallows In Deep End -- Be It Mudslides Or Sinkholes, Lawyer's On The Case

Some call her the Water Witch, and Karen Willie, artist-turned-farmer-turned-counselor-turned-prosecutor-turned-privat e attorney, likes the nickname.

"I have always liked water. I have a great respect for the destruction" it can cause, said the 47-year-old Seattle woman who grew up swimming and ice-fishing on Lake Superior in Wisconsin.

"If it's water and it looks promising, I will take it," said Willie, whose specialty is mudslides, sinkholes and other water-driven disasters.

"Storms have been good to me so far."

Willie now is in the center of a civil suit brought against the city of Seattle by four of six Magnolia homeowners whose houses on Perkins Lane West were destroyed by mudslides following the soggy weather of the winter of 1996-97.

If she has enemies, they are not easy to find, or at least not willing to speak out. Those who have worked with Willie say she's a formidable lawyer, tough and with an attitude.

"She is one of those hard-charging attorneys, very aggressive, on the bulldog side," says John De Vleming, a Seattle attorney who recently came out on the losing end in a legal battle with Willie.

Though he won't talk about that case, he harbors no hard feelings and even says he admires Willie's abilities.

"She is very competent, very ethical, very hard-working," he said.

"I have a great respect for her."

The Perkins Lane lawsuit is scheduled for trial in February 2000, and millions of dollars are at stake. At issue is whether the city should use taxpayers' money to compensate homeowners for their losses.

The homeowners say the city should pay at least part of the damage because it failed to warn them their properties were in imminent danger of sliding. But authorities have declined responsibility, calling the slides a natural phenomenon over which they had no control.

To prepare for trial, Willie has been working with engineers and hydrology experts, dealing with thick volumes, maps and charts that to a layman may look puzzling.

She prefers to see sites firsthand, sometimes slogging through mud and water to get there.

"I often go to sites, probably more often than other lawyers," she said after a recent visit to Perkins Lane, where at the bottom of a cliff the abandoned home of one of her clients caught fire the other day and burned down.

Willie says she chooses her cases carefully.

"A lot of times, I will tell people `I am not finding enough.' A lot of times, it's just an act of God. I try not to fight unless there is a good reason."

Michael Rosenberger, Seattle assistant city attorney and Willie's legal foe in the lawsuit, refrains from religious references in the Perkins Lane case, but says: "The city did not in any respect cause this event to occur. Slides have been happening for hundreds of years."

Rosenberger also points out the disaster was not something unexpected.

"Each of these folks moved to Perkins Lane knowing to one degree or another that they are moving into area where landslides occur."

Willie thinks the city should be responsible not for what it did, but what it failed to do. Smaller and less serious slides have been occurring on Perkins Lane for a long time.

In the spring of 1996, following heavy rains, the ground-water level increased dangerously.

Though experts recommended installation of dewatering wells to avoid more dangerous landslides, the city delayed work on them until November, "when it was much too late," Willie says.

Moreover, the city did not even share the experts' reports with the homeowners who now claim they would have financed the construction had they been alerted.

"There are some legal issues that are not perfectly clear" says Rosenberger.

He adds that the case is complicated because a lot of technical issues are involved.

That may be a benefit for Willie.

"She has an incredible quick grasp of technical things," says Fletcher Driscoll, a consultant specializing in water supplies who has worked - providing expertise - with attorneys across the country for more than 20 years.

Driscoll adds that Willie's ability to draw on scientific expertise and then "present the most powerful scientific case . . . in a very powerful way," is a strength that distinguishes her from other attorneys.

Willie "had several different lives" before becoming a Water Witch. She wanted to be a theater director and went to several schools before finally getting her bachelor's degree in arts from Antioch University in Marina del Rey, Calif. She lived on a farm in Minnesota for two years with "goats and several guys." Later, she worked as a counselor for heroin addicts in New York City.

"I had 50 staff and 200 heroin addicts, so there is not much that scares me now."

Her clients say they find her reassuring. "I would have not gone to this lawsuit if not for her," says Elizabeth Parke, one of Willie's Perkins Lane clients.

"I was exceedingly reluctant to get into it. . . . Nobody made any big promises," Parke says. But Willie "knows what she is doing."

Willie, too, has confidence in herself. She was 30 years old and working with addicts in New York City when she decided to become a prosecutor. She thought that as a counselor, she could not do enough to stop the ills of drug abuse.

After three years at Fordham University Law School in New York City, she got her law degree and moved to Seattle to begin her job as a criminal prosecutor.

Another three years of dealing "with rapes, prostitutes and child abuse," she started having nightmares. That was when she switched to a safer, purer area of law.

"Water is more removed," she said. "I always liked water."

In 1987, she began working for King County's Surface Water Management Division, and that's when she started building her expertise. Each Friday, with a group of biologists and hydrology engineers, she would go out on site trips to look at "forthcoming attractions" - sites vulnerable to slides, leaks or sinkholes.

"They tortured me with engineering, and I tortured them with law," Willie said.

Today, Willie is divorced and lives with her 10-year-old son, Devon, on the top of Queen Anne Hill. Though she can see the mountains, she has no water view.

"But I have a hot tub. And when it starts raining hard at night, I worry about my clients' houses. But I do not have to worry about mine." ------------------------------- Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge is included in this report.

Magdalena Kulig's phone message number is 748-5813. Her e-mail address is mkulig@seattletimes.com