Bryant has been with the firm since July of 2007. He is a 1981 graduate of the University of Wisconsin - Madison where he obtained a Degree of Bachelor of Business Administration with a Major in Finance and Investment Banking. He is a 1984 Cum Laude graduate of Marquette Law School, during which time he also interned for Justice Louis J. Ceci of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Between 1984 and July of 2007 he practiced with La Crosse, Wisconsin firm of Klos, Flynn & Papenfuss - Chartered. He was elected La Crosse County Bar president in 2000-2001.
Bryant has successfully litigated a variety of civil matters at the trial stage both before judges and juries. He has also handled appeals before the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and Wisconsin Supreme Court. His practice is primarily devoted to representing clients in matters that are in suit. His civil litigation experience includes representing injured parties, as well as defending those being sued for personal injury and their insurers. He has also represented various parties in business disputes over such matters as non-competition agreements, theft of business secrets and enforcement of contracts to sell real estate and privately held stock. He has litigated ground disputes such as those that may arise out of adverse possession, easement claims and boundary line disputes. He has represented parties in will and trust disputes that raise the issues of competency, undue influence and breach of fiduciary duty. He has also represented secured and unsecured creditors in collection actions.
Representative Experience
- Recovered a substantial structured settlement for a 12 year old boy who lost his thumb on the PTO of the family tractor while helping to do barn chores against a tractor repair shop for prior negligent repair.
- Recovered monies for a young teenage driver, who suffered severe facial scarring, when alone in a car and driving on a rural road for the first time flew through a "T" intersection and then a field and landed in a tree filled ravine, from the local municipality on the grounds the intersection was missing a previously placed stop sign due to a wind storm and the municipality was negligent in not timely replacing the sign.
- In defending an auto insurer and their driver against a claimed $100,000 soft tissue neck injury and headache claim, where at trial the plaintiff called both the treating doctor and chiropractor live and both of whom testified the plaintiff sustained a permanent soft tissue neck injury which was causing headaches, convinced the jury by cross examination of the experts using the existing medical chart and without an independent medical exam that the jury should only award medical expenses incurred during the first month of treatment resulting in a $1,500 verdict.
- Convinced an extremely experienced trial judge by calling numerous lay witnesses as to their detailed day to day experience with the aunt that his client, a middle-aged strong willed businessman, had not exercised undue influence over his aunt, whose competency was also in question, when he took her to an attorney who amended his aunt's trust to distribute all of her assets at death to him and eliminated his brother and sister 's 1/3 share each, where the siblings called the aunt's treating doctor who testified he thought the aunt's competency was very questionable and that his dealings with the client were such that he thought the client was the most pushy and overbearing person he ever had to deal with.
- Convinced a trial judge, based on historical usage, to open as a Township Road a portion of pavement the defendant claimed as a private drive, as an extension of an exiting Town Road for the benefit of an adjoining landowner, despite the Township taking no position as to whether it considered this area a Town Road, and then convinced the Court of Appeals to extend the Township Road even further so as to fully connect the client's property to the Town Road as matter of law.
- In opposing a motion for summary judgment by the owner of a small town bank to void a contract he had signed to sell his stock to the client on grounds the contract was void for vagueness and on the grounds the client, a lawyer, had improperly dealt with the unrepresented banker in obtaining the banker's signature on the contract, skillfully used the transcript of a 4 hour deposition of the banker to debunk any claimed impropriety on behalf of the lawyer and any claim the banker did not understand what he was signing to obtain a judgment from the trial judge forcing the banker to convey the contracted for stock.
