Eastern Montana Injury Lawyers

Jesse Medearis graduated from high school in Baker. He grew up on a ranch and spent years working in the oilfield before he went to law school.

Alex Tsomaya graduated from high school in Glendive and put in time in the patch himself.

We both still have family out there, and we still get back regularly.

That matters, because most of the lawyers advertising for Eastern Montana injury cases have never been east of Billings except to take a deposition. When someone tells us they got hurt on a workover rig, we don't need the job explained. When a case comes out of Fallon, Dawson, Custer, Richland, or the surrounding counties, we know the community it came from — and we know that out there, your reputation follows you.

Medearis & Tsomaya represents injured people and families across Eastern Montana, including Baker, Glendive, Sidney, Miles City, Wibaux, Terry, Ekalaka, Plevna, Circle, and the surrounding communities.

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We've Done the Work, Not Just Read About It

There's a real difference between a lawyer who has read a deposition about a tank battery and one who has worked on them.

Jesse grew up on a ranch and spent years doing roustabout and pipeline work before he went to law school. Alex worked the safety side of the oilfield and grew up in a railroad family in Glendive.

Between us, we've been on both ends of the same problem — the hand doing the job, and the person responsible for whether it gets done safely.

Ranch and farm work. Jesse grew up in a rancing family. He's worked cattle, run equipment, and done the jobs that send people to the hospital every year in this state — PTO shafts, augers, balers, grain handling, and livestock that outweighs you by a thousand pounds. He knows the difference between a shield that was removed and one that failed.

Roustabout and pipeline work. Tank batteries, flowlines, valve work, building and maintaining location, ditch and right-of-way work, tie-ins. This is the production side of the business — less glamorous than a drilling rig and responsible for a great many of the injuries.

Oilfield safety. Alex worked in oilfield safety before practicing law. He knows what a real safety program looks like and what a paper one looks like. He knows how JSAs are supposed to be run and how they actually get run, how incident investigations are conducted and what they're built to conclude, and where the documentation quietly stops matching the work.

That last piece matters more than it sounds. Companies defend these cases with their safety paperwork. Knowing how that paperwork gets produced — and by whom, and under what pressure — is a different thing than reading it cold.

Railroad. Alex grew up in a railroad family. Rail work is its own world, with its own hazards and its own body of law, and it's not something most personal injury lawyers have any real familiarity with.

It all shares the same problem. The work gets done the way it gets done, and the documentation describes something else. Insurance defense lawyers build their cases in that gap and count on plaintiff's counsel not knowing the difference.

We know the work.

Cases We Handle Across Eastern Montana

Car accidents. The most common serious injury case out there, and not the same animal as a city crash. Highway speeds, two-lane roads, deer and livestock, gravel, ice, and long distances between help. A crash on US-12 or MT-16 at highway speed does damage a 35-mph fender bender doesn't.

Commercial trucking. I-94, US-12, MT-16, MT-7, and the two-lane highways carrying crude, water, sand, grain, and rig moves. Heavy trucks on rural roads produce catastrophic crashes, and the carriers behind them have investigators on scene within hours.

Uninsured and underinsured motorist claims. A serious rural crash frequently involves an at-fault driver carrying minimum limits that don't come close to covering the harm. Your own UM/UIM coverage often becomes the real source of recovery — and your insurer will not point that out.

Agricultural and ranch injuries. PTO entanglements, auger and grain handling injuries, tractor and equipment rollovers, grain bin engulfment, livestock incidents, chemical exposure, and ATV and UTV accidents. Many of these cases run against an equipment manufacturer or a custom operator rather than an employer, which changes the analysis entirely.

Oilfield and pipeline injuries. Tank battery and vapor exposure incidents, trench and excavation collapses, falls from tank tops and catwalks, struck-by and caught-between injuries, pressure and line failures, H2S, crane and rigging failures, hot work burns, and vehicle accidents on lease roads. We handle drilling-side cases as well — rig floor injuries, well control incidents, and derrick falls.

Railroad injuries. Railroad workers are not covered by workers' compensation. Injured rail employees bring claims directly against the railroad under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, which works differently from an ordinary injury case and has its own deadlines. We also handle grade crossing collisions, where the question is often whether warning devices, sightlines, and crossing maintenance met requirements.

Wrongful death. Losing someone this way isn't something a lawsuit fixes. What a claim can do is hold the responsible party accountable and provide for the people left behind.

Insurance disputes and bad faith. When a carrier denies, delays, or underpays what the policy promised.

Other injury and civil claims. Not everything fits a category. We also handle premises liability and unsafe property conditions, dog bites, defective and dangerous products, construction defect claims, property damage, and civil disputes involving contracts and business dealings.

Who Actually Pays a Montana Personal Injury Claim?

Nobody out here grows up wanting to sue somebody. You handle your own problems. You don't make a scene, you don't take what isn't yours, and you don't want to be the person who dragged a neighbor through something. Those aren't small values and we're not going to try to talk you out of them.

We've also watched people walk away from serious claims because of them — people with real injuries and real bills who decided it wasn't worth what it would cost the community.

Three things worth sitting with before you make that call.

The person who hurt you probably did the right thing already. They carried insurance. That's what a responsible person does — pays premiums for years so that if they ever hurt somebody, there's something there to make it right. Bringing a claim doesn't undo that decision. It's that decision working the way it was meant to.

Not filing doesn't protect your neighbor. It protects the insurance company. The premiums were collected either way. If nobody brings a claim, the carrier simply keeps money it was paid to have available. Your neighbor doesn't get any of it back. The only party that comes out ahead is the one that had the least to do with what happened.

The cost doesn't disappear. If the responsible party's insurer doesn't cover it, somebody still pays. It comes out of your savings, out of the operation, or out of what you meant to leave your kids. Asking a carrier to pay what it agreed to pay isn't taking a handout. It's closer to the opposite.

We handle these cases with all of that in mind. We're not interested in embarrassing anyone for sport or filing something designed to humiliate a neighbor. The large majority of these matters are resolved with an insurance company and never see the inside of a courtroom.

Distance Changes These Cases

Eastern Montana injury cases have features that firms from elsewhere consistently underestimate.

Help takes longer to arrive. EMS response across counties measured in hundreds of square miles is not a city response time. Delay affects outcomes, and outcomes affect damages.

Care is spread across systems. Someone hurt near Baker may be stabilized at Fallon Medical Complex, flown to Billings for surgery, and rehabilitated somewhere else entirely. That means records scattered across multiple providers, and a damages picture that's easy to under-document if nobody assembles it properly.

Air ambulance bills are their own problem. A single flight to Billings can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and balance billing disputes are common. This needs to be handled deliberately, not discovered at settlement.

Juries are local. A case tried in Fallon, Dawson, Richland, or Custer County is heard by people who work these jobs or have family who do. That cuts both ways, and it rewards a lawyer who understands the audience rather than one who talks down to it.

Where Eastern Montana Cases Are Filed

Seventh Judicial District — Dawson, Richland, McCone, Prairie, and Wibaux Counties. Sits in Glendive.

Sixteenth Judicial District — Custer, Fallon, Carter, Garfield, Powder River, Rosebud, and Treasure Counties. Sits in Miles City.

Cases involving out-of-state defendants — common when a trucking company or operator is headquartered elsewhere — may be filed in or removed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, Billings Division.

What It Costs

Nothing up front. We take personal injury cases on a contingency fee — our fee is a percentage of what we recover, and if there's no recovery you owe no attorney fee. The firm advances case costs.

We put the fee terms in writing and explain them in plain language before you sign anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to drive to Bozeman to work with you?
No. We handle initial consultations by phone or video, and we travel for cases. We're from out there and we get back regularly — meeting in person is usually a matter of scheduling, not distance.

Why hire a Bozeman firm instead of someone in Billings or Miles City?
Fair question. The answer isn't the address, it's who's working your file and what they know. Jesse is from Baker and did roustabout and pipeline work. Alex is from Glendive and worked oilfield safety. Both of us spent years on the insurance defense side before representing injured people, so we know how these claims get evaluated and defended. If we're not the right fit for your case, we'll tell you and try to point you somewhere useful.

I'm already on workers' comp. Is it too late to look at other claims?
Usually not, but timing matters. Third-party claims run on their own deadline, and evidence at a well site disappears fast. Call sooner rather than later.

I was hurt in North Dakota but live in Montana. Can you help?
Talk to us. Which state's law applies depends on more than where the injury happened, and it materially affects what you can recover. Alex Tsomaya is also licenced in North Dakota and can practice there.

Will my employer find out I called a lawyer?
An initial consultation is confidential. Montana law also prohibits retaliation against workers for pursuing a comp claim. If you're worried about your job, say so at the outset — it's a legitimate concern out there where employers are few and everyone knows everyone, and it affects how we approach a case.

What if I was partly at fault?
You can still recover. Expect the other side to argue you ignored a safety rule or should have known better. That argument is usually more effective on paper than in front of a jury that has done the work.