Brody D. Swanson

The dispute required separating two things that the opposing side wanted joined: ownership under an earlier stock agreement, and later claims for wages and equitable compensation. Swanson focused the second action on what it actually had to prove — an enforceable promise, completed work, and measurable damages — rather than allowing it to ride on inferences from the already-resolved ownership case. The earlier ownership judgment could not stand in for proof in the later compensation action; that action required its own documents, its own witnesses, its own alleged conduct, and its own requested relief.

The second action began in 2019 and asserted unpaid wages, statutory liquidated damages, unjust enrichment, and quantum meruit. Swanson and Jordan Glaser represented Red Oak Diesel, which disputed both the alleged succession promise and the claimed work after 2003.

Defeating Unsupported Compensation Claims

The compensation theories depended on a chain of proof: the services performed, when and how often the work occurred, what compensation was promised or reasonably earned, and a method connecting those facts to a reliable dollar amount.

Swanson showed that the record lacked the day planners, financial statements, time records, and other materials needed to establish those elements — and that the alleged succession promise never became a signed agreement. A claim built on decades of asserted work needed decades of documentation, and the documentation was not there.

Red Oak Diesel won summary judgment in August 2025. On July 22, 2026, the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the evidence could not establish an enforceable promise, the services rendered, or a non-speculative measure of compensation. The affirmance closed the case on precisely the ground Swanson had framed from the start: not a dispute about credibility for a jury, but an absence of proof the law requires before a jury is ever assembled.

The Word Iowa Left Out

Roberts v. Roberts turned on a single legislative choice made decades before the parties signed anything. Swanson and Glaser represented Elizabeth Roberts in a dispute over a real-estate portfolio worth approximately $15 million.

A 1993 premarital agreement waived each spouse's ordinary elective share but gave the survivor the home occupied at death and one-third of the deceased spouse's net real-property interests. In 2017 — twenty-four years into the marriage — the couple signed a document titled "Partial Revocation of Antenuptial Agreement." It removed the one-third provision, left the elective-share waiver in place, and substituted new consideration.

Swanson's argument began with the instrument's true character. Its legal nature turned on what it changed, not what its title claimed. A document that preserves the elective-share waiver, eliminates a negotiated one-third property right, and substitutes new consideration has the structure of an amendment, whatever a drafter chooses to call it — and Iowa law treats amendments and revocations very differently.

After David Roberts died in 2022, with the real estate held almost entirely through a revocable trust, Elizabeth sought enforcement of the original premarital agreement. The district court upheld the 2017 document. The appeal went to the Iowa Supreme Court.

One-Third of Fifteen Million Dollars

Iowa Code section 596.7 permits revocation of a premarital agreement after marriage. The uniform act on which Iowa modeled its statute permits amendment or revocation. Iowa adopted "revoked" and left "amended" out.

That omission was the case. The Court treated the legislature's word choice as deliberate and read it alongside section 597.2, which protects a spouse's inchoate interest in the other's property from postmarital contracting. The 2017 document did not eliminate the premarital agreement; it swapped some obligations for others — the work of an amendment, which the statute does not authorize.

On May 10, 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court held the 2017 amendment invalid and reversed. The ruling restored the original premarital agreement and protected Elizabeth's one-third interest in the real property. The court remanded counterclaims concerning benefits Elizabeth had received under the invalid 2017 arrangement. The governing instrument — and with it, one-third of a fifteen-million-dollar portfolio — had been won on the strength of a word the legislature declined to enact.

The Trustee Who Wanted to Buy the Farm

The Herthel C. Uhl Revocable Trust owned 135 acres of Woodbury County farmland. After the life beneficiary died and every grandson had reached twenty-five, the trust's own terms directed equal distribution among the beneficiaries and termination. The trust's work was done; what remained was to hand over the land.

Instead, trustee and beneficiary Eric Hennings proposed buying the land himself for its $1,420,650 appraised value. Three beneficiaries objected, submitted a broker estimate ranging as high as $4 million, and noted that the property had never been publicly listed.

The structure of the proposed transaction defined the problem. Hennings first offered the beneficiaries an opportunity to buy at the appraised value; when no one bid, he signed an agreement to purchase the land himself and asked the court to approve it. He was trustee, seller for the trust, and prospective buyer — three roles in a single transaction, with only one person occupying all of them.

Swanson and Kale Rogers represented the objecting beneficiaries. The district court concluded that the terminated trust's general sale power did not authorize liquidation and that no winding-up need required the proposed sale.

The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed in April 2024, confirming that self-dealing requires court approval and fair treatment of every beneficiary, and finding a single appraisal and a private, unmarketed transaction insufficient to establish that the sale protected value. Its decision rested on the trust's termination, the absence of any demonstrated need to sell, the lack of market exposure, and the fiduciary scrutiny that attaches whenever a trustee proposes to buy trust property from himself. The affirmed denial preserved the farmland from an insider sale and enforced what the beneficiaries were owed: the trust's termination direction, proof of necessity, meaningful market exposure, and even-handed treatment.

Eight Hundred Dollars and the General Contractor Who Wasn't

Homeowners paid Randall Wheeler $800 to design improvements and help locate contractors, then contracted directly with Lightwine Construction for new siding. When the siding later failed, they added Wheeler to the lawsuit and alleged that his coordination made him the general contractor — a theory that would have converted an $800 consulting arrangement into responsibility for the whole project.

Swanson's defense rested on the homeowners' own words. They had repeatedly testified that Wheeler was not their general contractor, and they had selected and paid Lightwine themselves.

The legal move was to separate coordination from contract formation. Lightwine's belief that Wheeler was directing details could not create mutual contractual intent between Wheeler and the homeowners when the homeowners' testimony and their direct payments showed a different agreement entirely.

In July 2024, the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Wheeler. No reasonable jury could find the general-contractor agreement required for the contract and warranty claims, and the economic-loss doctrine independently barred the negligence theory. No claim survived against Wheeler.

The homeowners had dismissed their claims against the installer. Swanson secured a complete resolution for Wheeler: the homeowners' own testimony established an agreement that imposed no general-contractor duties on him.

The $2.5 Million Verdict

Sarpy County, Nebraska Case No. 20-520 produced a $2.5 million jury verdict with Swanson and Glaser as counsel. Swanson's injury practice also includes a coverage recovery beyond an insurer's initial limit position, along with ATV, wrongful-death, injury, and dog-bite matters.

Agriculture before the Appellate Briefs

Swanson grew up in an agricultural family in Clarinda, Iowa, and the land-and-legacy disputes that anchor his practice — farmland trusts, family real-estate portfolios, closely held business succession — are the disputes of the world he comes from.

He graduated cum laude from Buena Vista University, worked with the Innocence Project of Iowa, and earned his law degree from Drake University in 2017. At Drake, he practiced as a student attorney and served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Agricultural Law. His published note proposed Iowa's adoption of a revocable life-estate deed — a transfer-on-death instrument designed to preserve an owner's control during life while moving real property outside probate at death. The note addressed intergenerational property transfer; his later practice includes farmland trusts, family real-estate portfolios, closely held business succession, probate, and real-property disputes.

He joined Peters Law Firm in Council Bluffs immediately after law school and became a partner. His work ranges across personal injury, wrongful death, family law, trusts, real property, business disputes, and appeals — including the Iowa Supreme Court argument that turned on the word the legislature left out.