Fanning Harper Martinson Brandt & Kutchin litigation team.

Finalist in the Small Firm Category

Led by Thomas P. Brandt, a team of lawyers at Fanning Harper Martinson Brandt & Kutchin in Dallas defeated a suit brought by an internet celebrity, won a case against a city that had been deemed unwinnable and beat an opponent believed to be unbeatable. All that happened in 2016 and 2017.

Primarily a litigation firm, Fanning Harper is dedicated to helping the insurance industry, governmental entities, school districts and individuals facing a variety of legal issues. For Brandt, a director at the firm, and his team, the emphasis is on teamwork when a new case comes in the door.

“When we talk about teamwork, it's not just a phrase; it's truly how we practice,” Brandt said.

As Laura O'Leary, a member of the firm, noted, “We're all working together to think out strategy.”

O'Leary was on Brandt's team that defended the city of Irving against claims of civil rights violations in Mohamed v. Irving Independent School District, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 2016. The suit was brought by the family of a Sudanese immigrant dubbed “Clock Boy” after police arrested him at age 14 for allegedly possessing a hoax bomb at school. He claimed the device was a homemade clock. The charge against the student was later dropped, but he was suspended from school for three days. When the student's story went viral, then-President Barack Obama invited him to the White House.

“It's not every day that you have a case where the plaintiff is invited to the White House,” Brandt said.

In May 2017, U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay dismissed the suit against the city and other defendants and held that the plaintiff failed to allege a policy, custom or practice of the city that allegedly caused the underlying constitutional violation. Although Lindsay dismissed certain claims without prejudice, allowing the plaintiff to file an amended petition, the judge dismissed the second suit in March 2018.

Brandt and his team also won a significant victory for the city of Dallas in a First and 14th Amendment case stemming from the city council's passage of a resolution barring the city manager from contracting for the use of the city's convention center for what the event promoter described as a convention “with erotic, but nonobscene messages.” The promoter filed Three Expo Events v. City of Dallas in federal court in Dallas, citing cases in its brief that the promoter argued supported its position on free speech.

“It was universally perceived to be an unwinnable case,” Brandt said.

In 2016, Brandt's team defeated the promoter's motion for a preliminary injunction after the court determined that the convention center constituted a limited public forum. U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater of the Northern District of Texas dismissed the suit in May 2017, holding that Three Expo Events lacked standing to sue the city for alleged violation of its First Amendment rights because it never intended to enter into the contract to lease space at the convention center.

“How could it suffer injury if it never intended to do something?” asked Francisco “Frank” Valenzuela, another member of the firm who worked with Brandt on Three Expo.

Fitzwater also denied Three Expo's motion for leave to file an amended complaint to add the owner of the expo as a plaintiff in the suit.

Three Expo appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which heard arguments in the case in March 2018.

In March 2017, Brandt and his team won a jury verdict favoring Lewisville Independent School District in a suit brought under Title IX in which a teenage girl alleged the district discriminated against her because of her gender by not responding properly to her claim that she was sexually assaulted at an off-campus party and bullied and harassed afterwards. The girl also brought a retaliation claim under Title IX, alleging that the district retaliated against her—including not taking sufficient action against the boys she claimed had raped her and forcing her to continue her education from home—for reporting the alleged sexual assault and bullying.

“It was a gut-wrenching experience for everyone involved,” said Brandt, who worked on the case with Stephen Henninger, who also is a Fanning Harper member.

U.S. District Judge Ron Clark of the Eastern District of Texas in Sherman granted the school district's motion for summary judgment on the discrimination claim but the retaliation claim was tried to a jury, which in March 2017 returned a unanimous verdict for the school district, finding no retaliation had occurred. Henninger said the retaliation claim was particularly interesting because there are not a lot of reported decisions on Title IX retaliation claims.

“There were a lot of unknown factors,” Henninger said.