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Biz Court Significantly Trims Scope of Damages in Southwest Pilot’s 737 MAX Suit Against Boeing - A Texas Business Court judge has determined the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association failed to sufficiently connect the dots between The Boeing Company’s alleged misrepresentations about the airworthiness of the 737 MAX aircraft, the subsequent grounding of those planes following two fatal crashes, and the consequential damages the union alleged its members suffered as a result. September 29, 2026
Catching Up with Hope Shimabuku - After a decade of serving her country as the first regional director of the Southwest Office for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Hope Shimabuku jumped at the opportunity to again create something new when she led the opening of Finnegan's Dallas office this month. And the elite global IP firm would’ve been hard-pressed to find someone better to be boots on the ground. The Texas Lawbook visited with Shimabuku about her legacy at the USPTO and her aspirations for Finnegan in Texas. September 29, 2026
Litigation Roundup: Amici Flood Federal Circuit, Supporting Samsung in Injunction Fight - In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Texas State Securities Board says it was the entity that determined NFL star Travis Kelce was the victim of a Ponzi scheme, a dispute between concrete industry competitors is dropped and the Texas Supreme Court is urged to determine courts here have jurisdiction over a $500 million fight between Brazilian mining companies. September 28, 2026
5th Circuit Judge Southwick to Take Senior Status, Opening a Bush-Era Seat - Judge Leslie Southwick, an 18-year veteran of the Fifth Circuit, has announced he is taking senior status, opening a seat on the bench for President Donald Trump to make an appointment. Texas lawyers who've appeared before Judge Southwick, including Dykema's Chris Kratovil, Norton Rose Fulbright’s Anne Johnson and Lynn Pinker's David Coale, praised his fairness and civility on a bench often defined by sharp ideological divides. September 28, 2026
Dallas Jury Hits Expro Holdings with $7.7M Verdict for Breach of Contract - A Dallas County jury deliberated for about two and a half hours before unanimously awarding more than $7.7 million to Arlington-based MCR Oil Tools last week, finding its longtime business partner Expro Holdings had breached a contract. The 20-year business relationship between the companies came to an end in 2023 when Expro chose not to renew its licensing agreement. September 28, 2026
Frisco Clinic Owner Convicted in $17M TRICARE Fraud Scheme that Funded Gold-Plated Cybertruck - A Fort Worth federal jury convicted Kevin Curry on all nine counts of a healthcare fraud and kickback scheme that bilked TRICARE out of more than $17 million, with prosecutors saying he used stolen doctors' identities and fabricated records to bill for unnecessary treatments. Curry's case was one of seven North Texas prosecutions tied to a recent DOJ healthcare fraud takedown that charged 455 defendants in schemes exceeding $6.5 billion nationwide. September 28, 2026Centerpiece
2026 San Antonio Corporate Counsel of the Year Award Recipients Announced - Howard Energy Partners, BioBridge Global, and Valero are repeat winners. Lawyers at Frost Bank claimed two honors. In-house counsel at Affinius Capital, Alterman, CPS Energy, and Lewis Energy also scored gold. ACC San Antonio and The Texas Lawbook Monday announced the recipients of the 2026 San Antonio Corporate Counsel Awards. September 28, 2026
Energy Boom to Space Race: The Stellar Career of Hillary Holmes - In a wide-ranging interview, Gibson Dunn capital-markets leader Hillary Holmes takes Texas Lawbook subscribers inside a career that placed her at the center of SpaceX’s historic public offering this year. But that is only the latest chapter in a much deeper Texas story that charts her rise from the Houston “deal room” of her childhood to one of the country’s top corporate lawyers, known for her instinct to see beyond the transactions themselves. September 24, 2026Expert Voices
The Taxing Challenge of Produced Water - As millions of barrels of oilfield wastewater flood into Texas from New Mexico daily, shrinking underground disposal capacity in the Permian Basin threatens to constrain future energy production. Levying a severance-style tax on out-of-state produced water would generate over $100 million annually, protect Texas operators and spur vital investment in water recycling infrastructure. September 29, 2026
Refining the Case for Houston as a Seat for International Arbitration: Where the City Stands and What Comes Next - Houston has the courts, the law and the infrastructure to compete as a seat for international arbitration, but few people outside Texas seem to know it. A recent CLE session dug into what's holding the city back, and what a working group is now doing about it, from a modernized arbitration statute to a data-backed appeal to general counsel. September 21, 2026
Stories You Might’ve Missed
The Real Harry Potter’s ‘Magic Wand — Loyalty to the Law’ - “Your boss is a crook!” Arthur Golden, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and a lawyer for Big Tobacco, screamed into the telephone in the fall of 1998. “A crook!”
On the other end of the line, Harry Potter, then a special assistant attorney general in Texas running the tobacco litigation, who was appointed three decades ago by then-Texas Attorney General Dan Morales to lead the historic lawsuit brought by the state of Texas against Big Tobacco. Potter and Golden had negotiated the details of the historic $15.3 billion settlement agreement between the state of Texas and large cigarette makers.
“Arthur was extremely angry — livid,” Potter said. “He talked about secret lawyer contracts. I didn’t know anything about it, but it sent chills throughout my body."
In Part II of The Texas Lawbook's series on the tobacco litigation, learn the story of the real Harry Potter, a Houston lawyer whose secret power was his ethics and commitment to the law. July 16, 2026
