Utah Civil Practice

David A. Thomas is the Rex E. Lee Endowed Chair and Professor of Law Emeritus at Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he taught from 1974-2012. He was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1944, and was educated in Utah schools after 1950. He served a 30-month LDS mission in North Germany from 1963-;65.

He earned his B.A. and M.L.S. degrees at Brigham Young University (1967, 1977) and his J.D. at Duke University Law School (1972), after an interruption for military service in Vietnam. Following law school graduation, he completed a federal judicial clerkship and practiced law in Salt Lake City, before joining the new law school faculty at Brigham Young University. He received professor of the year awards in 1998, 2000, 2005, and 2010. As a teacher and author in both property and civil procedure areas, he has effectively combined theory and practice in conducting real property transactions, dispute resolution, and expert witness assignments. He proposed and drafted Utah's first statutory changes in common law easement rules, which were enacted as the state's enabling legislation for historic preservation easements; he also drafted Utah's long range highway corridor preservation legislation. Professor Thomas has been admitted to practice before the Utah Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. He has been a bar examiner for Utah and has prepared bar examination questions for Utah and several other states. He has also served on numerous law school accreditation site inspection teams. He was a member of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of the American Bar Association, where he held several leadership positions. He was also a founding member of the Real Estate Transactions Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Professor Thomas has published extensively on real property, civil procedure and common law legal history topics, including over 60 books, chapters in several treatises, and articles in professional journals. He is the author of A Practical Guide to Disputes Between Adjoining Landowners--Easements (with James H. Backman), Utah Civil Procedure, Utah Civil Practice, and (with Backman) Utah Real Property Law. He is the editor-in-chief and principal author of the 15-volume treatise Thompson on Real Property, Thomas Editions (LexisNexis, 1994-to present), which has been cited in hundreds of state and federal cases. In 2013 he issued the 2-volume work History of American Land Law.

Patrick Tanner grew up in southwestern Wyoming and graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in English (magna cum laude, with University Honors) in 1992. As an undergraduate, he worked as proofreader of transcripts of television and radio programming at a press-clipping company. In 1995, after serving as an Executive Editor of the BYU Law Review, he graduated first in his class at BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School. During law school, Mr. Tanner worked as a law clerk in the Appeals Division of the Utah Attorney General's Office, assisting with research and drafting of appellate briefs in criminal matters. Following graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to Commissioner Michael Goldsmith of the United States Sentencing Commission, and then to Justice I. Daniel Stewart of the Utah Supreme Court. He has practiced law with the firm of Burbidge & White in Salt Lake City since 1998.

The majority of Mr. Tanner's law practice has consisted in representing clients in defending various types of civil litigation, primarily tort matters, including medical malpractice, product liability, insurance defense, and premises liability. He has been actively involved in representing school districts in litigation and non-litigation matters, including eminent domain actions, zoning and property disputes, personnel discipline and dismissal, student discipline and free speech, real property transactions, and in drafting and revising school district policies. He is admitted in Utah and in Wyoming.