© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Jan. 29) – Marshall Simmons, a prominent Dallas trial lawyer who represented the Murchison family and the Dallas Cowboys for more than two decades, died Thursday. He was 82.
Simmons was one of three legendary trial lawyers who reigned over the Dallas corporate legal market from the late 1960s through the 1980s, along with Jim Coleman and Jim Cowles.
A 1956 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Simmons joined the Dallas corporate law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist in 1967, where he started the firm’s litigation practice.
Simmons, who was known to zip around Dallas in his red Porsche, hired and trained some of the most prominent trial lawyers practicing in Dallas today, including Bill Sims at Vinson & Elkins, Ray Guy at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Paul Watler at Jackson Walker.
“My dad loved the law and he saw it as a profession, not a business or as work,” said his youngest daughter, Luann Simmons, who is the managing partner of the San Francisco office of O’Melveny & Myers, a global law firm based in California. “He loved recruiting great young lawyers and helping them grow. He believed the lawyers at Jenkens & Gilchrest were just as much part of his family as I was.”
Ms. Simmons said her father believed in treating everyone with respect, including lawyers opposing him in court.
“My dad believed you could be in a bitter courtroom battle and zealously defend your client, but then you should go out and have a beer with the other side at the end of the day,” she said.
Simmons’ father, Dwight Simmons, was the managing partner at Thompson & Knight for many years.
“Marshall was a true blue blood in the Dallas legal profession,” says Watler, who Simmons hired right out of law school. “He loved practicing law. He loved mentoring young lawyers and the lawyers he mentored thrived.”
Simmons was involved in dozens of high-profile cases, but none were as big or as controversial as the 1978 lawsuits he filed involving the adult movie, Debbie Does Dallas.
“Marshall represented the Cowboy Cheerleaders and he sued adult movie theaters all over the country because the actress playing Debbie wore a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader outfit,” said Sims, who worked with Simmons on the case.
“The goal was to stop distribution of the film and we filed injunctions all around the country, but the mafia couldn’t make copies fast enough,” he said. “We would get an injunction in one city and another theater would open up across town. We couldn’t get a global injunction against the mob.”
Sims said the federal appellate court decision in the case, which is officially titled Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders v. Pussycat Cinema, is one of the most cited decisions in copyright law ever.
In 1974, Simmons represented the Dallas Cowboys in a lawsuit he filed against the World Football League, which was trying to steal away two of the Cowboys’ players, offensive lineman Rayfield Wright and defensive lineman Jethro Pugh.
“We learned the World Football League was going to sign the players the next morning, so Marshall got a Dallas judge to sign a restraining order at midnight to stop it,” Sims said. “We had to get the court clerk out of bed and down at the courthouse to certify the order in the middle of the night.”
Luann Simmons, who, interestingly enough, practices intellectual property law and represents Apple in IP litigation, said she was 10 when her father came home from work and told her and her mother about the lawsuit over Debbie Does Dallas.
“He told us about the case, but he wouldn’t let me see the movie,” she said laughing. I always knew him as my dad, never as a lawyer. When I wrote a letter to him from camp, he would send it back to me redlined. He believed in good grammar.”
Memorial services for Simmons will be held Sunday at the Lovers Lane Methodist Church, where he taught Sunday school for several years.
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