| 
A Maverick Deal
Mike Gruber says he really wasn't interested in selling his 9,215-square-foot house in the exclusive Preston Hollow neighborhood in Dallas. But when the house next door to his went on the market, potential buyers touring the area asked their real estate agents to approach Gruber and his wife to ask if they wanted to sell their home, Gruber says. They didn't. "And then Dirk came along," says Gruber, a partner in Dallas' Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail. The potential buyer who liked the Grubers' house was Dirk Nowitzki, the 7-foot tall, seven-time NBA All-Star forward for the Dallas Mavericks. Nowitzki made the Grubers an offer they couldn't refuse. The couple agreed with Nowitzki not to disclose the sales price. But the Dallas Central Appraisal District lists the home's taxable value at just over $3 million. They closed the deal about six weeks ago, and Gruber says Nowitzki was nice enough to let him and his wife stay in the home for an extra four weeks after the sale closed; the Grubers moved out two weeks ago. "You'd think he'd be intimidating, but he really is a great young guy," Gruber says. He adds that he has a good idea what Nowitzki liked best about the house — something that's more important to the NBA star than to the Grubers. "My wife is 5'1" and I'm about 5'7" . . . but I think he probably liked the high ceilings." Gruber says he and his wife moved to a house that needs some work and plan to build another house.
Teaching Assignment
Austin solo Mina Brees plans to teach in Ukraine next year, but she isn't sure exactly where or what she'll teach. In an April 14 letter, J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board chairwoman Shirley Green notified Brees of her selection as a Fulbright scholarship grantee. It won't be Brees' first teaching assignment overseas, however. Brees says she volunteered through the Salzburg, Austria-based Center for International Legal Studies to teach at Poland's Szczecin University in 2006 and at Estonia's University of Tartu in 2007. Brees says she learned about the Fulbright scholarship grantee program through contacts she made in those earlier teaching assignments and applied for a grant. Applying involved writing a proposal that she submitted to the 12-member scholarship board that selected the grant recipients. According to Green's letter, the board — whose members are appointed by the president of the United States — is authorized under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961. Brees says she doesn't know yet the amount of her grant. The board has tentatively scheduled her teaching from February to June 2009, Brees says. Although she proposed to teach dispute resolution, Brees says she could be asked to teach another subject. "Hopefully, I will not be asked to teach science or math," she says. "I am totally a liberal arts person."
Courtroom Drama
 |
John Grisham and Scott Turow have a new competitor. The latest author of legal thrillers is a Houston trial attorney and med-mal defense lawyer whose paperback "So Help Me God" was published nationwide on April 1. In Larry D. Thompson's book, a botched abortion and rabble-rousing by a charismatic preacher lead to a trial in which the question of when life begins takes center stage. In the book, J. Robert Tisdale, the best plaintiffs attorney in Texas, represents preacher Thomas Jeremiah Luther in a slander suit against the doctor who performed the abortion. "Almost without exception, everyone who reads it thinks it's a really great courtroom drama," says Thompson, a partner in Lorance & Thompson. He initially could not find a publisher and self-published an earlier version of the book. Then, a chain of connections — beginning with his dentist's book club — led to his discovery by Pam Nelson, director of sales promotion for Hillside, Ill.-based Levy Home Entertainment, a nationwide book distributor. "His book captivated me," she says. "The characters were so rich." The next step was a book deal with New York publisher Tor Books, a division of Macmillan. On April 18, Thompson arrived in downtown Dallas for his book launch party at the Old Red Courthouse. He says his late brother, bestselling true-crime writer Thomas Thompson, inspires him as a writer. "There were times when I really thought Tommy was helping me write this book," Thompson says. He has finished another novel that dissects the insanity defense, featuring an attorney who develops paranoid schizophrenia and is accused of murder in Galveston. It will likely be published in spring 2009, he says.
