D’Ann R. Penner is a partner at Clayton, Fruge, and Ward Law. From her office in Port Allen, Louisiana, she represents companies and individuals throughout Louisiana in a variety of civil litigation matters. D’Ann pursues justice for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, injured employees, fishermen, shrimpers, oystermen, between landowners and business owners, and other clients, who are often up against formidable forces coming from corporate and government entities.
D'Ann is passionate about providing quality legal representation to landowners who have been wrongly deprived of their rights. She has litigated a wide variety of property right, breach-of-contract, and public trust claims in both state and federal courts and has briefed appellate matters before the Louisiana Supreme Court, Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
D’Ann represents clients in a variety of civil litigation matters, including unfair trade practice claims, pipeline trespass cases, property damage cases, land-loss cases and toxic torts. She has represented several landowners sued by pipeline companies that were trying to seize the landowners’ land for pennies on the dollar. D’Ann works for landowners of all sizes facing companies seeking right of ways or leases. She handles all aspects of litigation from client intake and trial through appeals.
From 2018 through 2024, D’Ann was selected to be part of the Louisiana Super Lawyers’ Rising Stars list, an honor given to no more than 2.5% of the lawyers in the state who are either 40 or younger or have been practicing for 10 or fewer years. She was named in The National Trial Lawyers: Top 100 Trial Lawyers rankings for civil law in Louisiana in 2020-2024. In 2021 and 2024, she was named in the National Trial Lawyers organization’s Top 10 Business Tort Trial Lawyers list.
D'Ann earned her J.D. at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and two Master of Laws degrees, the first in environmental law from Tulane University and her second from Baylor Law School in litigation management. D’Ann earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California. She was a tenured history professor at the University of Memphis, and the director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change before she traded academia for the law. The co-author of two books, D’Ann has also written two law review articles and six articles for the Louisiana Association for Justice’s monthly magazine.
Education
Executive LL.M., Baylor University, 2022
LL.M, Tulane University, 2015
J.D., Loyola New Orleans, 2012
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1995
M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1991
B.A., California State University, Fresno, 1989
Admissions And Certifications
Louisiana State Bar Association
United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
United States Court of Appeal for the 5th Circuit
Supreme Court of the United States
Affiliations
Member, The National Trial Lawyers: Top 10 Business Tort Trial Lawyers, 2021-24
Member, The National Trial Lawyers: Top 100 (2020-24)
Super Lawyers’ Rising Stars (2018-2024)
Louisiana State Bar Association
Louisiana Association for Justice
Past Employment Positions
Broussard & David, LLC (Lafayette, LA), Associate Attorney
Larry Curtis, APLC (Lafayette, LA), Associate Attorney
Veron, Bice, Palermo & Wilson, LLC (Lake Charles, LA), Associate Attorney
Kelly, Hart & Pitre (New Orleans, LA), Associate Attorney
Honorable Pro Tempore Judge Val Exnicios for the Civil District Court of New Orleans, Law Clerk
Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, Memphis, Tennessee, Director
University of Memphis, Department of History, Memphis, Tennessee, Associate Professor
