Bio

Brandon Cate is a litigation attorney in the firm’s Northwest Arkansas office. His practice focuses on commercial litigation, including litigation concerning ERISA, employment, mortgage servicing, real estate, media law, eminent domain, products liability, and class action defense. His experience includes representing defendants in putative class actions filed in Arkansas and Missouri regarding Internet practices, defending a national mortgage servicer in a putative class action concerning mortgage practices, and defending a publicly traded company in a putative class action against claims of employment discrimination. He has defended mortgage servicers in litigation filed in Arkansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Tennessee, Kansas, and Mississippi. He regularly represents insurance companies in ERISA-benefits and other group-benefits litigation in Arkansas and Tennessee courts. He also represented a natural gas pipeline company in successfully securing through eminent domain a right of way covering the distance of one-half of the State of Arkansas. Mr. Cate is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® in the areas of Commercial Litigation, Eminent Domain and Condemnation Law, Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law, Litigation – ERISA and Litigation – Labor and Employment, and was named the 2022 Fayetteville “Lawyer of the Year” for Litigation – Labor and Employment. He has been recognized as a Mid-South Rising Star in the area of Employee Benefits by Super Lawyers, and named to the 2016 Under 40 Hot List, a Future Star in Litigation, and a Labor & Employment Star – South by Benchmark Litigation. He is rated AV Preeminent® by Martindale-Hubbell. Mr. Cate advises media and government entities on defamation, First Amendment, and Freedom of Information Act issues. His recent trial work includes successfully representing a newspaper and its reporter in obtaining a 911 recording and other documents pursuant to the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. He also successfully defended at trial an Arkansas state agency in a lawsuit that sought through the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act the identity of a confidential criminal informant. Mr. Cate’s recent trial work also includes successfully obtaining a declaratory judgment in favor of landowners whose neighbor sought to take by adverse possession 27 acres of land outside of Harrison. And Mr. Cate successfully defended at trial two Fayetteville homeowners who had been sued for breach of a real-estate agreement. Mr. Cate’s recent work also includes representation of a national company in obtaining summary judgment on claims of employment discrimination and retaliation in the company’s Rogers warehouse.