About Dain Goudarzi
Dain Goudarzi is a trial lawyer who was born and raised in East Texas, where he was a fifth-generation graduate of Gilmer High School. Growing up, he followed his father, Brent Goudarzi, and his uncle, Marty Young, to courthouses across Texas and the United States and always knew he wanted to be a lawyer. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Alabama, earning degrees in Business and Criminal Justice and interning for the Honorable L. Scott Coogler, Chief Judge of the Northern District of Alabama. He then attended SMU Dedman School of Law in Dallas, where he won the SMU Closing Argument Competition as a first-year student and joined SMU's National Mock Trial Team in his second year.
After his second year, the Texas Supreme Court granted him a provisional bar card, and during his third year of law school he served as first-chair lawyer in 85 depositions and tried three cases from voir dire to verdict, including the largest verdict in Texas history for an attorney on a provisional bar card. He now handles personal injury cases across the State of Texas. He is a member of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association and the East Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Goudarzi & Young, L.L.P.
These results are credited to Goudarzi & Young, L.L.P.. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A Titus County jury awarded $730 million to the family of Toni Combest, a 73-year-old great-grandmother killed when a Landstar Ranger truck hauling a 197,000-pound Navy submarine propeller struck her car on a narrow Highway 271 bridge, though the family's actual recovery came from pretrial settlements: $50 million from Landstar Ranger and $1 million from escort company S&M Pilot Service, with the verdict itself returned against the small front-escort company 2A Pilot Cars.
On February 13, 2016, 21-year-old Riley McPherson was killed on U.S. 271 near Gilmer, Texas, when his van struck the side of a Jefferson Trucking flatbed tractor-trailer that was blocking all four lanes of the highway while its driver, on hour 17 of a run home from Ohio, tried to back it into a private driveway. McPherson's parents, Eddie McPherson and Karen Pearson, sued Jefferson Trucking, driver Eric Wayne Jefferson, and Timothy Wayne Jefferson in the 115th District Court of Upshur County. On November 8, 2018, a jury apportioned 65 percent fault to Eric Jefferson, 20 percent to Jefferson Trucking, 10 percent to Timothy Jefferson, and 5 percent to McPherson, and set damages at $260 million, which the comparative-fault finding reduced to $247 million. The defendants appealed, then voluntarily dismissed their own appeal, leaving the trial court judgment intact.
Before dawn on May 24, 2020, a Werner Enterprises tractor-trailer struck the rear of a passenger car stopped in a live lane of Interstate 30 near Sulphur Springs, Texas, with two children, ages 7 and 9, inside. The car caught fire and both children died. Their parents sued Werner and its driver, alleging negligent and grossly negligent operation of the tractor-trailer, negligent hiring, training, and supervision of the driver, and negligent entrustment of the truck. In July 2022, Werner announced it had agreed to pay $150 million to resolve the case without a trial, funded by the company and its insurance carriers. Goudarzi & Young, through founding partner Brent Goudarzi, represented the family.
A 39-year-old man was left quadriplegic in 2017 when an 18-wheeler struck his vehicle on Highway 259 near Ore City in Upshur County, Texas. The case went to trial, where evidence showed the truck's driver, Dijuana Smith, had been involved in multiple crashes before the wreck, and where attorneys said she had violated state and federal trucking regulations. Goudarzi & Young, L.L.P., of Gilmer, Texas, represented the injured man, and the parties reached a $140 million settlement in July 2019. The firm, and later a Lawdragon profile of managing partner Brent Goudarzi, both described it as the largest settlement for a single plaintiff in American legal history. The identities of the plaintiff and the trucking company were not publicly disclosed.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
