Lawyers Survive With A Little Help From Their Friends -- In The FBI

These lawyers inadvertently angered the wrong people -- and barely escaped alive.

It’s hard out here for an attorney, when you’re tryin’ to get money for the loans…

Especially when your legal work forces you to make enemies with an angry ex-husband who might try to, say, blow up your car. Or when you do contract work in a city nuisance department and wind up targeted by hit men for your work on the case against a local strip club.

No, this isn’t the trailer for Taken 2, it’s just two recent cases out of Texas and St. Louis.

Luckily, no one was killed in the car bomb attack or a strip club owner’s plan to kill the Fort-Worth Mayor and a mild-mannered contract attorney, but there’s plenty of stranger-than-fiction details to these cases….

First, let’s take a look at the combined bungled car bomb attack and case of mistaken auto identity. From the Am Law Daily:

Milton “Skip” Ohlsen III, a former mixed martial arts promoter turned political operative, has pleaded guilty to four felony charges related to a 2008 bombing that he hoped would kill his ex-wife’s divorce lawyer, former Husch Blackwell partner Richard Eisen.

Instead, the explosive, which Ohlsen initially denied planting in a suburban St. Louis parking garage, detonated and injured former Armstrong Teasdale partner John Gillis Jr., who happened to drive the same Acura TL car model as Eisen.

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Dude, this is suburban St. Louis, not freaking Gotham City. A car bomb, really? Luckily, Gillis survived, but just barely. The then 69-year-old suffered serious burns, and the explosion forced the evacuation of the Carondelet Plaza office and condominium complex, where Husch Blackwell’s offices (as well as a Ritz Carlton) are located.

The FBI was brought in, and the feds hunted down Ohlsen, who had already made headlines for sparring with Eisen during the divorce trial and an unrelated political scandal.

Down in Fort Worth, Tex Parte Blog tells us about an attorney doing part-time contract work in the city’s nuisance department who learned some scary news in a meeting with the FBI, an agency that’s been putting in some good work this year, apparently:

“I’m closing in on 30 years [of practicing law]. And I’ve never had anything quite like this happen,” says [Tom] Brandt, a director in Dallas’ Fanning Harper Martinson Brandt & Kutchin.

Brandt says he learned in a meeting with the FBI and other officials that he and Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck were targeted because of nuisance-abatement legal work Brandt had performed for the city.

According to the Star-Telegram, Robert Walker Grant, whose Flashdancer strip club was shut down because of “the prevalence of drugs, prostitution and assaults at the club,” admitted to putting a hit on Cluck and Brandt in court this week. He admitted to contacting “an intermediary to hire men from Mexico to kill Cluck and Dallas lawyer Tom Brandt for $10,000 each.”

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Grant and his attorney also said he didn’t actually want to hurt anyone, and was just really upset about his business’s problems. Hmmm…

Either way, thank goodness no one was hurt. Brandt told Tex Parte how grateful he is for the “angels” who helped him out. It’s good to be alive right?

“I was taught by nuns when I was a kid. I was told that angels look out for us. And I learned two things: The nuns were right, and some of the angels work for the FBI. Those guys saved my life, and I’m grateful to them. And how do you thank someone for saving your life?”

You go, secret agent men!

Tom Brandt of Fanning Harper Martinson Brandt & Kutchin wants to thank FBI after murder-for-hire plan targets him [Tex Parte Blog]
Arlington strip club co-owner pleads guilty in plot to kill mayor
[Star-Telegram]
Man Pleads Guilty to Bombing Aimed at One Am Law 200 Partner That Injured Another [Am Law Daily]
Ohlsen admits setting Clayton garage bomb [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]