Brody D. Swanson is a civil litigator who routinely forces insurance conglomerates, self-dealing fiduciaries, and state bureaucracies to answer to the law. Operating from Council Bluffs, Iowa, he has secured multimillion-dollar jury verdicts against corporate defendants, dismantled bad-faith insurance negotiations, and reshaped Iowa’s appellate jurisprudence regarding premarital contracts. His practice is anchored by a refusal to accept administrative convenience at the expense of individual rights.

As a partner at Peters Law Firm, P.C., Swanson operates at the intersection of high-stakes personal injury law, complex appellate litigation, and property disputes. He represents injured clients, estate beneficiaries, and people in disputes with insurers, fiduciaries, and public agencies. Whether taking a denied liability claim to a $2.5 million jury verdict in Sarpy County or challenging the constitutionality of the Iowa Supreme Court’s own administrative orders, Swanson utilizes an aggressive, rights-based approach to civil litigation. Recognized as a Top 40 Under 40 Civil Plaintiffs Attorney by the National Trial Lawyers and a 2025 Marquis Who’s Who in America honoree, Swanson’s professional philosophy is rooted in a commitment to listening carefully to clients. He has publicly stated that clients should never be treated as mere files, emphasizing that a lawyer has to listen carefully to the people sitting across from them.

Dismantling Corporate Risk Management in Injury Litigation

The machinery of modern insurance defense is fundamentally designed to exhaust the injured. By routinely denying liability and extending low-ball settlement offers, insurance carriers bank on the assumption that opposing counsel will lack the resources or resolve to pursue trial. Swanson’s record in personal injury and wrongful death litigation serves as a direct countermeasure to these corporate risk-management tactics.

Swanson does not settle for the sake of calendar convenience. This is perhaps best illustrated by a low-speed Nebraska collision case where the corporate defense categorically denied liability and issued a final offer of a mere $5,000. Rather than accept this sanitized corporate valuation of his client’s suffering, Swanson aggressively litigated the matter, ultimately breaking the insurer’s defenses and forcing a $100,000 policy-limits settlement (a legal resolution mechanically capping the payout at the absolute maximum monetary amount dictated by the defendant’s insurance contract). In another instance involving a catastrophic traumatic brain injury where fault was entirely denied, Swanson relentlessly pursued the claim until he secured a substantial settlement, ensuring his client was not abandoned to shoulder the medical burden alone. Specific operational details—such as the exact year of the low-speed collision, the precise dollar figure of the brain injury settlement, and the corporate identities of the opposing insurance conglomerates—remain shielded from public disclosure by confidential resolution agreements; nevertheless, the available record confirms consistent, systemic victories over these entities.

When insurance carriers refuse to deal fairly, Swanson takes them to a jury. His most prominent trial victory to date is a $2.5 million jury verdict in Sarpy County, Nebraska (Case No. 20-520). Rejecting an inadequate defense compromise that significantly undervalued the human damages, Swanson presented the case to a jury, completely dismantling the defense’s narrative and securing a multimillion-dollar judgment that far exceeded the corporate risk managers’ highest threshold.

His broader injury docket is marked by consistent, high-leverage victories against monolithic insurance entities. While exact settlement integers are tightly guarded by standard non-disclosure clauses, confirmed public data enumerates multiple massive resolutions. These include a seven-figure policy limits settlement for a wrongful death and personal injury claim in Nebraska, a separate seven-figure resolution in a severe dog bite case, a six-figure policy limits settlement for wrongful death in Iowa, a $500,000 policy-limits payout for a catastrophic ATV accident, an additional $100,000 settlement for a dog bite, and a directed verdict in an Iowa jury trial. Through meticulous preparation and a willingness to leverage the adversarial process, Swanson keeps the client’s injuries from being reduced to claim-adjustment math.

Shaping Appellate Law and Defending the Disinherited

Beyond the trial court level, Swanson has proven to be a formidable appellate advocate, willing to untangle decades of statutory misinterpretation to protect vulnerable individuals from concentrated financial power. His work in the 2024 Iowa Supreme Court case, Roberts v. Roberts (Case No. 23-1131), stands as a landmark victory that redefined the state’s understanding of prenuptial agreements.

The core issue in Roberts centered on whether the Iowa legislature intended to allow spouses to amend premarital agreements mid-marriage. When Iowa adopted its version of the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act (UPAA) in 1992 as Iowa Code Chapter 596, the legislature notably deleted the word “amended” from the model rule, allowing only for full revocation. For decades, this statutory nuance sat unexamined.

The conflict erupted when the estate of David Roberts attempted to enforce a “partial revocation” of a 1993 prenuptial agreement. The original 1993 agreement guaranteed David’s widow, Elizabeth, a one-third share of his extensive real estate empire upon his death. This guaranteed share constituted what is legally termed an “inchoate dower interest”—an incomplete or future property right held by a spouse, analogous to holding a highly valuable claim ticket that only fully activates and pays out upon the partner’s death. However, in 2017, David’s legal team drafted a mid-marriage “partial revocation” designed specifically to strip Elizabeth of this exact property right. After David’s death, his son and executor attempted to use this document to entirely disinherit Elizabeth from the real estate.

By labeling the document a “partial revocation” rather than an “amendment,” the estate’s architects attempted to bypass the statutory prohibition against mid-marriage amendments. Swanson recognized this as semantic gamesmanship designed to circumvent the law and coerce a spouse. Taking the case to the Iowa Supreme Court, Swanson analyzed the underlying legal mechanism, arguing that a “partial revocation” is fundamentally an amendment because it alters terms mid-marriage without completely destroying the document. He established that because the Iowa legislature purposefully excluded the word “amendment” when adopting the UPAA, their direct statutory intent was to strictly forbid these piecemeal mid-marriage alterations.

The Iowa Supreme Court agreed, reversing the lower court and ruling that a postmarital amendment relating to inchoate dower interests cannot be enforced. This victory not only restored Elizabeth Roberts’s rightful inheritance but also cemented a vital legal doctrine preventing structural financial abuse within marriages.

Confronting Fiduciary Abuse in Trust Litigation

In the realm of estate law, power is frequently concentrated in the hands of fiduciaries who operate behind a veil of procedural complexity. When trustees abuse their authority to enrich themselves at the expense of beneficiaries, the legal system requires advocates who can pierce that veil and demand strict accountability.

In the appellate case In re: The Herthel C. Uhl Revocable Trust (Case No. 23-0687), Swanson confronted a blatant attempt at fiduciary self-dealing. The trust, established in 2001, held 135 acres of highly valuable Woodbury County farmland. Upon the income beneficiary’s death in 2022, which legally triggered the trust’s termination, the acting trustee (who was also a remainder beneficiary) attempted to execute an agreement to sell the farmland to himself at the appraised value of $1,420,650, effectively sidelining the other family beneficiaries.

Swanson represented three of the beneficiaries who objected to this maneuver. He argued that the trust document contained no provision authorizing the trustee to sell the real estate to himself after the trust had terminated. Despite the trustee’s insistence that the sale was a necessary part of the “winding-up” process, Swanson successfully proved to both the district court and the Iowa Court of Appeals that selling the primary asset to oneself is neither legally necessary nor in the best interests of the trust’s beneficiaries. The appellate court affirmed the decision to block the sale, halting a clear abuse of fiduciary power and preserving the equitable distribution of the family’s agricultural legacy.

Agricultural Roots, Academic Rigor, and Community Leadership

To understand Swanson’s proficiency in property and trust litigation, one must look to his foundation in the agricultural heartland. Born and raised in an agricultural family in Clarinda, Iowa, Swanson understands that Midwestern farmland is not merely a line item on a balance sheet; it is a profound family legacy tied to generations of labor. He currently resides in Council Bluffs with his wife, Jordyn, and their two sons, Kendol and Lawson.

He attended Buena Vista University, graduating cum laude in criminal justice, where he was inducted into the Criminal Justice Honor Society, Lambda Phi. During his undergraduate tenure, he worked hand-in-hand with the Innocence Project of Iowa, a nonprofit dedicated to diligently reviewing evidence to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. This early involvement in post-conviction review reveals a foundational commitment to overturning state error and defending those who have been crushed by systemic failures.

At Drake University Law School, Swanson honed his focus on the intersection of law and land, serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law and becoming a published author. He practiced law as a Student-Attorney in Polk County, gaining critical early courtroom exposure. Beyond his daily legal practice, Swanson maintains an active profile in civic leadership, having served on the Iowa West Foundation Board’s Council of Members, as a former board member for Habitat for Humanity in Council Bluffs, and as a volunteer attorney for the Iowa Legal Aid Volunteer Lawyers Project.

Challenging Judicial Bureaucracy

A fundamental tenet of civil liberties is that a crisis does not suspend the Constitution. Yet, during the COVID-19 pandemic, court systems across the nation issued sweeping supervisory orders that paused civil proceedings and tolled statutes of limitations (a legal mechanism that unilaterally pauses the ticking clock dictating how long plaintiffs have to file a lawsuit). These orders prioritized the administrative comfort and safety of the judicial apparatus over the timely, constitutional administration of justice.

Swanson’s pandemic-era challenge shows a willingness to test procedural orders against constitutional limits, even when those orders come from the judiciary itself. In 2022, he successfully secured a District Court order finding the Iowa Supreme Court’s own pandemic-era supervisory orders to be unconstitutional. To challenge the highest court in the state on its own administrative turf requires immense tactical confidence and legal courage. While the granular legal justifications utilized by the lower court to overrule the state’s highest court—and any subsequent retaliatory appellate maneuvers—are currently absent from the primary public record, the overarching consequence of this district court order was unequivocally clear. Swanson successfully demonstrated that the judiciary cannot unilaterally rewrite statutory deadlines or suspend civil procedures without violating foundational constitutional boundaries, placing civil liberties firmly above the bureaucratic convenience of the state.

Future Outlook and Systemic Impact

The downstream, systemic implications of Swanson’s appellate victories are actively reshaping Iowa jurisprudence. By closing the “partial revocation” loophole in Roberts, Swanson has established a formidable precedent protecting spouses across the state; wealthier individuals can no longer utilize semantic tricks to quietly coerce their partners into surrendering vital marital assets mid-marriage. Looking forward, Swanson’s expanding docket at Peters Law Firm indicates a sustained trajectory of high-impact litigation. Whether he is forcing a multinational insurance corporation to pay a multi-million dollar jury verdict, stopping a rogue trustee from stealing a family farm, or taking the state’s highest court to task over administrative overreach, Brody D. Swanson consistently wields the law as an instrument of accountability, keeping the client’s lived harm at the center of the dispute.