[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_4″ last=”no” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_imageframe lightbox=”no” lightbox_image=”” style_type=”none” hover_type=”none” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”0px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”none” link=”” linktarget=”_self” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”no” class=”” id=””] 
[/fusion_imageframe][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”3_4″ last=”yes” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_text]By Mark Curriden
When the City of Dallas and Southwest Airlines went to federal court in 2016 to banish Delta Airlines from operating five flights a day at Love Field, the Atlanta-based carrier hired Bill Dawson to do battle in hostile territory against the two hometown favorites.
Southwest claimed Delta had the ability to operate as many flights as it wants at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport while Southwest was limited to the 20 gates at Love Field. Southwest also argued that Delta was technically trespassing.
Dawson, during a heated multiday hearing in federal court in Dallas, argued that Southwest had underutilized the gates at Love Field for several years, which he said violated a key provision in its deal with the City of Dallas.
“It was use it or lose it,” Dawson told U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade. “Use it or share it. These gates are not owned by the airlines. They’re owned by Dallas and its citizens.”
Judge Kinkeade followed Dawson’s argument and ruled that removing Delta from Love Field would be an unfair disruption for the public.
“Trials are a lot like life itself,” Dawson says. “There are key moments in each. How we handle those key moments is crucial in the outcome – be it a trial or our careers.”
Dawson, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Dallas, is celebrating four decades as a trial lawyer. He’s been involved in some of the biggest environmental lawsuits, patent infringement cases, oil and gas disputes, defamation allegations and securities and fraud cases.
He’s represented Energy Future Holdings, Monitronics International, Google and Dr. Phil McGraw. He successfully sued big accounting firms, which were so impressed with his skills that they later hired him to represent them in subsequent trials.
“Of all the great trial lawyers I’ve encountered, Bill is just special,” says Rob Walters, a partner with Dawson at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Dallas. “He themes cases like no one else can. He finds the pony every time.”
Even with all the highly complex and large-dollar cases and trials, Dawson says he cannot forget the first trial he witnessed as a summer associate at Fulbright & Jaworski in Houston in 1974 – a full year before he became a licensed lawyer.
“It was a one-day, $20,000 auto insurance trial,” Dawson says. “Basically, I carried David Beck’s briefcase. We started the trial in the morning, and it was over by late afternoon.”
The plaintiff was a wheelchair-bound woman who suffered a spine injury that made her a paraplegic. She was extremely sympathetic as the victim of an apparent hit-and-run crash.
The issue at trial was whether there was actual contact with the car that ran the plaintiff off the road and down a ravine where she suffered her injuries. No contact, no insurance coverage.
“David called to the witness stand the police officer who investigated the accident and he testified that the plaintiff’s car was destroyed such that there was no way to tell by looking at the wreckage if the hit-and-run driver had actually struck the plaintiff’s car with his car,” Dawson says. “The policeman explained how he concluded no contact.”
The jury found there was no contact and thus ruled in favor of the insurance company, “even though all the sympathy in the world was with the plaintiff,” he says.
“I still can see her sitting in the courtroom that day in her wheelchair,” Dawson says. “When the verdict was announced David looked down and then looked at me with a really sad look on his face and said, ‘let’s get out of here.’ The jury did the right thing, but it was a [depressing] victory for David.”
Dawson says the case left its mark on him two ways. First, he was able to see the great David Beck in action. Beck zeroed in on the key facts in the case and didn’t let the emotions around it divert him from his job.
“But I also witnessed the impact that a case can have on people and lawyers – the human side of it,” he says.
A 1975 graduate of Texas Tech School of Law, Dawson started his legal career as an associate at Carrington Coleman in Dallas working for Jim Coleman.
“Jim was the ultimate mentor because he wasn’t afraid to give us young lawyers a case and tell us to go handle it,” Dawson says. “A lot of the success in my career has been pure luck. I was lucky that a college professor at Texas Tech encouraged me to go to law school. And I was very lucky to get to work for Jim Coleman. Those are two huge career-defining moments for me.”
At a CLE program hosted by the SMU Dedman School of Law in 2016 featuring several of the Lions of the Texas Bar, Dawson said he remembered Coleman calling him into his office only a few months after he had started work at the firm.
“A client was on the phone complaining about the bill,” he says. “I was brand new. Jim put it on the speakerphone for me to hear. It made me very nervous because I did most of the work of which he was complaining about. So, I thought this could be my last day working there.
“At the end of the call, Jim said, ‘Sam, why don’t you just write a check for whatever it is you think it is worth and I will accept it for the work.’ And I thought, this is my last day.’”
Then the client said he wanted to discuss another case.
“Jim said, ‘No sir, there is no other case. If you don’t pay, we don’t work.’ The client agreed to pay the full amount. I thought, I’m still employed.”
Dawson’s first trial as a licensed lawyer came 10 months after he started practicing law. He represented a homebuilder who accused two neighborhood children – ages 11 and 13 – of being part of a group of kids that vandalized his property in The Colony. Dawson sued the parents as well, just for good measure.
The jury trial took place in Denton and lasted a week.
“I remember the 11-year-old, sweet-looking girl wearing a white dress looking like an angel floated into the courtroom,” he says. “I had previously asked the jurors during voir dire if any of them would have a problem awarding damages against two children. The jurors’ hands shot up. It was like they were doing the wave.”
Like the trial he had witnessed two years earlier, Dawson relied heavily on the testimony of a police officer in the case.
The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff and ordered the children to pay actual and punitive damages. The jury, however, found for the parents.
In 1994, Carrolton, Texas-based FoxMeyer Drug Stores hired Dawson to represent the company in a $500 million financial fraud litigation in state and federal courts consolidated in Pittsburgh that involved a failed drug store chain in the Midwest.
Dawson, using Dr. Phil McGraw as his jury consultant, successfully negotiated a settlement agreement before jury selection was finished. He then joined the trial team for another plaintiff in the same case. The jury found actual fraud.
The most personally difficult case he’s ever handled, according to Dawson, was a $50 million stock option backdating lawsuit in which he represented a close friend, who was the CEO of a company who was under attack by his own business and shareholders.
“The case was very complex, as there were cases filed in state and federal courts in Texas and Delaware,” Dawson says. “I was truly worried and this case took a lot out of me because it involved a friend. Throughout it all, my friend was as cool as a cucumber.”
Dawson’s client was fully vindicated in the civil litigation and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission dropped its investigation without bringing charges.
In 2014, Energy Future Holdings General Counsel Stacey Doré turned to Dawson to defend the energy company in a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club, which alleged that coal-fired plants owned and operated by EFH were in violation of the Clean Air Act.
After an intense bench trial in federal court in Waco, EFH walked away with a take-nothing judgment and the trial team was awarded legal fees.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]