About Us

Tyler moved to Seattle in 2007 and became a partner of Harrigan Leyh Farmer & Thomsen LLP in 2010. He co-founded Martinez & Farmer LLP in 2025.

Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America (Appellate, Commercial Litigation, Intellectual Property), Benchmark Litigation, Super Lawyers (Top 100), and Martindale-Hubbell rank Tyler among the top trial lawyers in the state. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, Fellow of Litigation Counsel of America and included on America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators® lists.

Chambers USA lauds Tyler’s “significant experience representing his clients in trials” noting that he “is a popular choice for bet-the-company litigation [and has] further experience acting on employment and trade secret disputes.”

“Tyler is an outstanding attorney.”

“His ability to break down complex issues and present practical, business-oriented solutions sets him apart.”

“Tyler is very bright, concise and thorough. His capacity for remembering the details throughout a lengthy and complex case is impressive.”

“Tyler is laser-focused, sharp and doesn’t miss a beat.”

Tyler’s work has been recognized by Best Lawyers since 2018.  He is ranked in four categories: Appellate Litigation, Commercial Litigation, Intellectual Property Litigation, and Eminent Domain and Condemnation law.

As lead counsel, Tyler has represented clients in class action and complex cases throughout the United States, including before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, and state and federal courts within Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. 

Tyler works closely with real estate owners and developers to help them solve a range of problems, including construction disputes, joint-venture and other complex contractual disputes.  Tyler also devotes a significant amount of his practice to working with entrepreneurs, helping them to protect their rights and grow their technology businesses. 

Recent “post covid” results include:

– Enforced class A investors’ rights in real estate development projects by obtaining temporary restraining order taking management control of six single purpose entities in order to avoid self-dealing and gross mismanagement by co-owner / manager;  successfully resolved after mediation and direct negotiations while client managed projects (summer – fall 2024).

-Enforced a founder’s shareholder rights by filing suit to prevent venture capital dominated board from closing an M&A transaction that would have substantially devalued of our client’s shares and run roughshod over this rights; defeated the company’s attempt to obtain a restraining order predicated on the client’s supposed interference with the transaction; successfully settled after mediation (summer – fall 2023).

– Enforced a minority shareholder’s rights by invalidating a purported option agreement on summary judgment and then resolved the lawsuit for immediate payment of 20 times the price stated in the invalidated agreement (2021)

– On behalf of the City of Seattle, we defeated class certification in a putative class action arising from June 2020 protests after in-person class cert argument in WD Washington in April 2022

– After in-person bench trial in WD Washington in March – April 2022, we obtained an order dismissing all of the petitioning tribe’s claims to have treaty fishing rights in our client’s fishing territory.  Affirmed by the Ninth Circuit (2025).

– After a 4 week jury trial, we obtained the trial court’s dismissal of the sole claim against our client (2020); affirmed by Court of Appeals after in-person argument (2022)

– After obtaining dismissal of a CPA claim seeking to restrict a network’s Covid-19 news coverage, Tyler argued before the Court of Appeals (via Zoom), which affirmed the trial court win (2020 and 2021)

– In federal court, we enforced a $30 mm real estate purchase sale agreement despite the buyer’s attempt to excuse performance based on Covid-19 regulations (2020)

– In a complex Zoom arbitration following a $400 mm real estate transaction, we secured a ruling that the controlling owner had violated the governing declaration (2021)

– In state court Nevada, we tried one of the first Covid era live jury trials regarding a complex breach of contract dispute (2021)

In 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 Tyler was honored among the Top 100 attorneys in the state by Super Lawyers.

Additional information about Tyler’s experience is available in our Representative Matters.