Patterson Dahlberg Injury Lawyers

What the firm handles

Two areas of law define the work here: personal injury and workers' compensation. The firm says on its own site that these are the only matters it takes. That is a narrow scope for a plaintiff practice, and in my opinion it tells a prospective client something useful before the first phone call.

On the personal injury side, the firm handles car accidents, truck accidents, and motorcycle accidents. It also takes wrongful death cases, dog bites, and slip and fall injuries. On the workers' compensation side, it handles workplace injuries, construction accident cases, and denied workers' compensation claims. Those categories come straight from the firm's own pages and its structured site data, so a reader can match them against what happened to them.

Two tracks under one name

The mix leans toward the kinds of harm that follow crashes and job sites. A truck case, for example, involves commercial insurers and federal safety rules that a standard car case does not. A workers' compensation matter runs on a separate state system with its own deadlines. Keeping both under one roof means a client with a work injury who was also hurt in a vehicle can raise both questions in the same place.

The firm calls out denied workers' compensation claims as a specific line of work. That points to clients who filed on their own, met a denial, and now need someone to challenge it. It is common enough in Minnesota that naming it as a service tells injured workers the door stays open after a first refusal.

How the firm came together

Thomas Patterson and Paul Dahlberg formed the firm in 2009. Patterson had spent years in his family's Rochester practice by then, and Dahlberg arrived after leaving Meshbesher & Spence, a Minnesota plaintiff firm. The Patterson name runs through the longer history, from Robert Patterson in the 1960s to Thomas Patterson today.

The lineage runs back well before 2009. Robert Patterson began practicing law in Rochester in 1963 and opened his own firm in 1969. Thomas Patterson joined that firm in 1991. Earlier names in this line include Patterson, Restovich & Lund and Patterson & Associates. The 2009 firm sits on a line of Rochester injury firms with roots more than sixty years deep.

The site also lays out an unusual structure. Patterson Dahlberg is presented as an association of two separate firms: Patterson Work Injury Law, P.A. and Dahlberg Injury Law, P.A. That division maps onto the two practice areas, with one firm carrying the work injury cases and the other carrying the personal injury cases. For a client, the day-to-day contact is the Patterson Dahlberg brand, while the two underlying entities keep the fields apart.

Who works there

The site names five attorneys. Thomas Patterson and Paul Dahlberg are the co-founders. Michael Garvey, Michael Patterson, and Jeremy Lampman are listed as associates.

Thomas Patterson has the fullest public biography. He is a Rochester native who graduated from Regis College in 1986 and William Mitchell College of Law in 1989. Minnesota admitted him to practice in October 1989, and he belongs to the Minnesota State Bar Association. He has represented injured workers since 1991, and in 1995 he narrowed his practice to workers' compensation claims alone. His work stays on the side of injured workers.

Paul Dahlberg carries the personal injury cases. He co-founded the firm in 2009 after his years at Meshbesher & Spence, and his work centers on injury claims for people who have been hurt. Between the two founders, the firm divides its two fields along clear lines, with Patterson on work injuries and Dahlberg on personal injury.

The associates

The three associates back the two founders across the caseload. On a plaintiff team this size, associates usually carry case preparation, client contact, and the paperwork that moves a claim from intake toward resolution, while the founders anchor the courtroom and negotiation work. The site presents the group as one team working the same two fields.

Where the firm works

The firm keeps two offices, one in Rochester and one in St. Paul. Through them, it serves clients across southeastern Minnesota and the Twin Cities metro area. The Rochester office carries the older Patterson roots in the southeast of the state. The St. Paul office extends the reach north into the metro, closer to the courts and insurers a Twin Cities client would deal with.

Rochester anchors the firm in the southeast, a region centered on the city and its medical economy. St. Paul puts the firm inside the seven-county metro. The two offices also sit near the court systems its clients use, the trial courts for injury suits and the state workers' compensation system for job injury disputes. Between them, the firm covers a good part of the populated eastern side of Minnesota.

How these cases tend to run

The two practice areas move on different tracks, and knowing the general shape of each helps a client before signing on. In Minnesota, such claims tend to proceed along familiar steps.

A workers' compensation claim usually starts when an injured worker reports the injury to an employer, who passes it to a workers' compensation insurer. The insurer then accepts or denies the claim. When benefits are denied, the worker can bring the dispute to the state's workers' compensation court, where a compensation judge hears the evidence and decides. Because Thomas Patterson has worked in this area alone since 1995, the firm brings long exposure to that path on the work injury side.

If the compensation judge's decision does not settle things, either side can seek review through the state's appellate process for these claims. Most matters do not travel that far. For the injured worker, the practical goal is usually medical coverage and wage replacement during recovery, and much of the lawyering aims at securing those benefits.

The personal injury track

A personal injury claim runs through the civil side. It usually opens with an investigation of how the injury happened, a review of medical records and bills, and a demand to the at-fault party's insurer. Many of these claims settle at that stage. When they do not, the matter can proceed to a lawsuit and, in some cases, a jury trial. Car, truck, and motorcycle cases turn on who was at fault and how serious the harm was. Under Minnesota law, a dog's owner can be held responsible when the animal injures someone, and slip and fall cases turn on who controlled the property where the fall happened.

Timing matters on both tracks. Minnesota sets deadlines for filing a personal injury lawsuit and separate ones for reporting a work injury and claiming benefits. Missing them can close a claim before it is heard, which is part of why injury firms press people to get advice early. The exact deadlines depend on the facts of a case.

What the record shows

A few points in the public record line up cleanly. The firm dates to 2009, sits on a Rochester injury line with roots in the 1960s, and keeps its work inside personal injury and workers' compensation. It runs two offices and lists five attorneys, with the deepest documented experience belonging to Thomas Patterson on the workers' compensation side.

At a first meeting, a client can ask the associates about their backgrounds and ask the firm about its experience with cases like their own. The pages give the shape of the firm, its history, and the record of its named founders. It is a fair set of questions for any injury firm, and the narrow focus here makes the founders' documented experience the main thing to weigh.

As a reviewer, I read the two-firm association and the single Patterson Dahlberg brand as one firm presenting a united front to clients while keeping the work injury and personal injury work under separate entities. For someone in southeastern Minnesota or the Twin Cities with an injury or a denied workers' compensation claim, that structure means the intake reaches attorneys whose work stays inside these two fields. The firm also keeps a public presence on Facebook, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn for anyone who wants to follow it before reaching out.