A livestock technology company and several of its executives and investors, including Kevin O'Leary of "Shark Tank," have asked a Colorado federal judge to throw out the lawsuit against them by the company's founder, who claims the defendants stole her company and intellectual property.

In a motion to dismiss filed Tuesday, O'Leary, his businesses O'Leary Ventures Management LLC and Wonder Fund North Dakota LLLP, as well as O'Leary Ventures CEO Paul Palandjian fired back at Melissa Brandao's claims that HerdDogg Inc. obtained $15 million in fraudulent investments after she was ousted from the company she created. Brandao's complaint, O'Leary and related defendants said, fails to state a claim, does not connect them to the alleged misconduct and further must be dismissed because the court lacks jurisdiction over each of them, none of whom live in or have directed conduct at Colorado.

According to O'Leary and related defendants, the only facts alleged against them involve a phone call where Brandao's attorney allegedly told Palandjian that HerdDogg insiders had stolen her patent assignments, improperly ousted her and then misrepresented to investors that HerdDogg owned those patents but that the alleged phone call took place prior to any O'Leary defendant being associated with the company.

"When stripped of its rhetoric and conclusory allegations, the complaint describes a shareholder dispute brought by a disgruntled founder against her former company, all of which occurred years before the O'Leary defendants invested in the company," O'Leary and the related defendants wrote in their motion to dismiss. "As is clear from the far-reaching and conclusory allegations in the complaint — and plaintiff's and her counsel's frenzied social media activity upon its filing — the O'Leary defendants were included in this shareholder dispute to generate publicity without regard to the effects on their reputation."

The other set of defendants to Brandao's claims, HerdDogg and executives of the company, separately filed their motion to dismiss her suit last month. In that filing, they similarly claimed venue in Colorado is inappropriate, that Brandao has not stated a claim as to multiple claims and that the complaint impermissibly groups the defendants through what is known as "shotgun pleading." HerdDogg and its executives also said Brandao was not defrauded because she has not suffered any actual injury and that her claims as to patent infringement are barred by the statute of limitations, among other contentions.

Both groups of defendants also pushed back on Brandao's Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act and Colorado Organized Crime Control Act conspiracy claims against them, contending Brandao lacks standing, among other elements.

John Oleske of the Law Office of John Oleske, counsel for Brandao, said Wednesday that he and his client believe the motions to dismiss are without merit and his client's claims are validly stated, adequately pleaded and will survive.

"It's not going to be enough, I don't think, for the O'Leary defendants to argue that they got involved in this after the fact or that any misstatements were only directed at other parties," Oleske told Law360. "The core allegation here is that they were involved in a business that they should have known better about and then were explicitly warned about, and then after that took their own actions … [after] they knew that my client was alleging the company did not have [patent] releases from her as they had told O'Leary."

Counsel for the O'Leary defendants and counsel for the HerdDogg defendants declined to comment Wednesday.

Brandao filed her suit in July alleging the scheme began in 2019 when HerdDogg's board of directors asked that the company hire a CEO to allow Brandao to focus on product development. Brandao claims that the new hire, Lou Faust, was a "complete charlatan" who misrepresented his experience as the CEO of a previous agriculture startup, Agribotix Inc., where he claimed he negotiated a successful exit acquisition for the founder.

Brandao alleged Faust used his position to pack the company with new executives and board members, and that the company eventually fired her in August 2022 without compensation, leaving her with a less than a 10% share in the company she created.

In 2021, Brandao claimed, company executives accessed her email to forge her electronic signature on two patent filings to assign the patents to HerdDogg, which she says she never intended to do. Brandao said she didn't discover the fraud until late 2023 and that during a call weeks before her firing, two HerdDogg board members fraudulently omitted disclosing information about the patents.

Since her firing from HerdDogg, Brandao has alleged the company made several fraudulent misrepresentations to investors, including the states of North Dakota and Nebraska, to induce $15 million in investment across several rounds of fundraising.

Brandao alleged O'Leary and his businesses became perpetrators of the scheme when her counsel spoke to Palandjian to inform him of HerdDogg's ongoing fraud. According to her complaint, O'Leary's Wonder Fund obtained $45 million from North Dakota to invest in small businesses through the U.S. Treasury's State Small Business Credit Initiative, where Wonder Fund then gave an undisclosed amount of this money to HerdDogg in 2023. When Brandao's counsel confronted Palandjian with information about the scheme, he became "defensive and accusatory," Brandao alleged.

Brandao is represented by John Oleske of the Law Office of John Oleske.

O'Leary, O'Leary Ventures, Wonder Fund and Palandjian are represented by Jeffrey Nieman and Brandon Floch of Neiman Mays Floch & Almeida PLLC and by Mark Williams of Williams & Serio LLC.

HerdDogg and its executives are represented by Nathan Dillon, Carolyn Isaac and Andrew Shelby of Michael Best & Friedrich LLP.

The case is Melissa Brandao v. HerdDogg Inc. et al., case number 1:25-cv-02254, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.