Donavan K. Eason

Based in the firm’s Charleston, South Carolina office, Donavan represents individuals and families in personal injury, wrongful death, and catastrophic injury cases across South Carolina and Georgia, and he brings particular depth and specialized experience to trucking and commercial vehicle litigation. Years inside the industry taught Donavan that the great majority of motor carriers run safe, responsible operations and do everything asked of them and more. His work targets the ones that do not. When a carrier cuts corners, it gains an unfair advantage over the companies that follow the rules and puts the motoring public at risk. He knows how to find that conduct and prove it because he once helped build and strengthen the compliance programs meant to prevent it.

Before joining Bowen Painter, Donavan spent years learning how the law works from the inside. He clerked for the trial courts of Virginia’s 25th Judicial Circuit and for Justice John Ellington of the Supreme Court of Georgia. At the Georgia Capitol, he served as legislative counsel to the Majority Leader of the State Senate, as a senior policy advisor to the Lieutenant Governor, and later worked as a registered lobbyist. That work gave him a practical command of how statutes and regulations are written and applied.

His work in the trucking industry did not begin in a courtroom. He was around commercial vehicles long before he represented the people and companies that operate them. Donavan grew up in Rochelle, a small town in Wilcox County, Georgia. His parents drove school buses and his grandfather ran a propane business that delivered across South Georgia. He went on to spend a decade defending companies and their insurers, first at one of the largest defense firms in the country, a nationwide operation of more than a thousand lawyers, and later at a transportation and trucking boutique. As outside counsel to motor carriers, he handled regulatory and compliance matters, responded to catastrophic accidents, and helped clients reduce their exposure before and after a loss.

Donavan works fluently with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration compliance and CSA safety scores, hours-of-service and electronic logging data, telematics and engine control module downloads, driver-fatigue evidence, advanced driver-assistance systems, and the tactics of chameleon carriers that reincarnate under new operating authority to escape a poor safety record. He is equally at home with the liability and coverage questions that follow: direct negligence claims against a carrier for negligent hiring, entrustment, and supervision; the MCS-90 endorsement and the Graves Amendment; and cargo and freight disputes under the Carmack Amendment and COGSA.

Donavan chaired the Trucking Steering Committee of the Georgia Defense Lawyers Association and has worked alongside the leadership of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, the Trucking Industry Defense Association, and the Transportation Lawyers Association, serving as panel counsel to motor carrier insurers across the country. He understands how carriers and their insurers evaluate a loss and set their resolution strategy. He has also served the State Bar of Georgia on its Formal Advisory Opinion Board and received the Young Lawyers Division’s Award of Achievement for Service to the Bar for his leadership of its Committee on Disaster Legal Assistance.

Donavan earned his B.A. from the University of Georgia, magna cum laude, and his J.D., cum laude, from Washington and Lee University School of Law, where he chaired the Moot Court Executive Board and won the Charles V. Laughlin Award for excellence in moot court advocacy. He and his wife, Ashley, grew up and graduated together in Georgia. Ashley is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist who serves as Director of Inpatient Medicine and as an Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital. She and Donavan live in James Island, South Carolina, with their two children, Ellie and Davis.