Dallas attorneys Gus Mignucci and Mackenzie Linyard take on insurance giants, negligent businesses and bad-faith deals, and they treat every client like family while they do it.
By Sondra Barr
A 17-year-old walks into a Deep Ellum concert venue, buys a drink without showing ID, and keeps drinking. Hours later, badly intoxicated and trying to walk home, he falls near the DART rail line. A train drags him about 200 yards. He loses both legs.
It was one of the first cases Gus Mignucci and Mackenzie Linyard took on together, and they went straight at the venue. Under Texas’s dram shop law, a business that keeps serving someone who is clearly intoxicated can be held responsible for what happens next. The firm won a significant recovery for the young man.
“If they didn’t hire us, they’d be taken advantage of by the insurance company,” Mignucci says. “The insurance companies are massive billion-dollar companies, and they’re trained to say no and pay as little as possible. We hold them accountable.”
From premed to the courtroom
After graduating from the University of Texas at Dallas and earning his law degree at Oklahoma City University in 2016, Mignucci spent nearly five years at Rad Law Firm, a large personal injury practice. He followed that with a year and a half in commercial litigation, then launched Mignucci Law Firm around 2022. Today it handles personal injury, commercial litigation, breach of contract and business law, which Mignucci sums up as “pretty much any type of physical or financial injury,” from a fender bender to a wrongful death.
Linyard spent about a decade at Rad, where the two became close friends. “I remember the day that Gus passed the bar exam,” he says, “going out and having lunch and celebrating that.” As the new firm grew, Mignucci kept making the same pitch. “He kept saying, ‘Hey, I need some help. It’s getting bigger. Come on over.'”
Two trial lawyers, one strategy
Plenty of firms settle everything. This one is built to go to court. Personal injury makes up roughly 75 to 80 percent of the caseload, and Linyard leads those cases, filing lawsuits, taking depositions and trying cases before juries. Mignucci leads the commercial litigation docket. Between them, they have tried several dozen cases and secured multiple million-dollar settlements.
Linyard, who studied economics as an undergraduate, says the partnership works because each covers the other. “We both know each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” he says. “Having been friends for the past 10 years, we were able to build off each other’s strengths and shore up each other’s weaknesses.”
Linyard is also board certified in personal injury trial law, a credential he has held since 2019. It requires significant time in trial as lead counsel, recommendations from four attorneys and a judge, and a demanding exam in Austin. “It’s like a second bar exam, but only for personal injury,” he says.
Mignucci compares it to choosing a surgeon. “Any lawyer can practice personal injury, but not any lawyer can be board certified,” he says. “You have board-certified orthopedic surgeons because that’s their specialty. They know what they’re doing.”
That expertise gives weight to hard conversations. “Sometimes the advice that I give them is not advice they want to hear,” Linyard says. “We’ve handled thousands of them. We’ve tried many of them. We know what we’re talking about.”
Holding wrongdoers accountable
With thousands of cases successfully settled and tens of millions of dollars recovered for their clients, the firm has a proven track record of results. Behind them are cases like the one against a tanning salon, where an employee with a prior criminal record secretly filmed women in a tanning booth. The employee pleaded guilty and went to jail. The firm then pursued the salon itself, which had left a brand-new employee with a record unsupervised and failed to enforce its own cell phone policy, and secured a strong settlement for the two women it represented.
Other attorneys have noticed. D Magazine named Mignucci one of the Best Lawyers Under 40, a vote of his peers, many of whom refer difficult cases to the firm. “They like working with me because I’m going to fight for my client,” he says, “but I’m not going to be unreasonable.”
Fighting for his community
Mignucci was born in Puerto Rico and still returns several times a year. He speaks with Spanish-speaking clients directly, without a translator or paralegal in between, and about half of his clients are Spanish speakers. Many don’t know they have the right to pursue an injury claim at all. “It feels really good to be able to help my people out,” he says, “and make sure that the big guys don’t take advantage of them.”
His support reaches beyond the office. Mignucci sponsors community events and festivals, and after years of coaching basketball at the Boys & Girls Club, he continues to fund the program so kids in Oak Cliff can keep playing without their families having to choose between league fees and food on the table.
The client comes first
Mignucci Law Firm doesn’t run billboards or TV ads. Nearly all of its work comes from referrals, and the partners intend to keep it that way. “They’re not just a number,” Mignucci says of his clients. “A lot of my clients have my own cell phone number, so they just call or text me directly.”
“There’s no case too small. There’s no case too big,” Linyard adds. “It’s not call and run through a phone tree to get to us.”
Mignucci’s position on fees is the one principle he won’t bend. Too many firms, he says, walk away with more than the client does. “With me, I’m not going to do that,” he says. “I make sure the clients are satisfied, that they’re getting a majority share of the settlement.” If that means reducing his own fee, he does it.
Staying sharp
Both partners guard against the burnout common in their profession, with monthly team outings and birthday celebrations for staff. Both men have daughters around the same age, and their favorite escape is a fishing trip to South Texas. “We always view that trip as a pressure release valve,” Linyard says.
Mignucci, a devoted Cowboys, Stars, and Mavericks fan who plays golf in his spare time, says clients are often surprised by how approachable they are. “We’re just normal guys,” he says.
Don’t wait to call
Their advice is direct: call right away. After an accident, make sure you are safe, call the police and get medical care, then call a lawyer before talking to any insurance company. “Insurance companies are trained to get them to settle for pennies on the dollar or try to make it seem like it was their fault,” Mignucci says. “A lot of people don’t know that they legally don’t have to talk to the insurance company.”
The same goes for a contract or business dispute. “Whenever they think something shady is going on, give me a call right away,” he says. “Let me talk to the other attorney.”
Years from now, Mignucci hopes clients tell their families one thing above all. “That we went above and beyond and fought for them,” he says. “We were advocates for their case.”
Hurt, wronged, or facing a business dispute? Call Mignucci Law Firm at 972-370-3378 for a consultation or visit MignucciLawFirm.com.
