© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Seemingly, 2006 was the year that Ada Brown’s judging days were over. It was the year that Dallas County went blue and, inevitably, Democrat candidates swept Brown and all fellow Republican Dallas County Criminal Court judges out of office.
But that statement is incorrect. After spending more than six years in private practice at McKool Smith, Brown will again call herself a judge.
This week, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Brown as a justice to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas in Dallas.
Perry’s appointment of Brown officially ends months of searching for a replacement of Justice Mary Murphy, who resigned from the Fifth Court of Appeals this spring. It also coincides with the ongoing void of the court’s chief justice, Carolyn Wright, who is currently in critical condition at the Baylor University Medical Center of Dallas.
It appears that Brown will not let the governor down; colleagues say that she is well prepared for the job.
“She’s known for her intellect, work ethic, compassion and her desire to have justice done,” said Chad Ruback, an appellate lawyer in Dallas. “I don’t think Ada is going to have any problem filling [Justice Murphy’s] shoes.”
Brown, who will begin at the Fifth Court of Appeals in the next couple of weeks, has spent the past six years practicing intellectual property law and complex commercial litigation in the Dallas office of McKool Smith.
“We are very proud of Ada and all of her many accomplishments,” McKool Smith Chairman and Co-Founder Mike McKool said in a statement. “She is an experienced and talented lawyer and well-deserving of this special recognition.”
During her time at the firm, Brown has worked on various substantive cases. Her experience includes representing Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. for matters regarding the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; securing a $391 million jury verdict and permanent injunction against software company SAP for its patent infringement against Brown’s client, Versata Software; and a $250 million verdict for an Irish inventor whose patent for a heart stent invention was ripped off.
Before joining McKool Smith, Brown served as a judge for the Dallas County Criminal Court No. 1, and before that, was the chief prosecutor for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. When Brown took the bench at age 30, it made her the youngest sitting judge in Texas.
Brown said that she is eager to combine her three loves in her new job: civil law, criminal law and legal writing.
“I’m really excited about this opportunity,” she said. “I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time.”
She added that she is excited to work in the appellate law area. She expects the opportunity to work with other justices will create a more “collaborative” environment and anticipates her work to be “intellectually interesting.”
According to Ruback, criminal cases generally fill a majority of the court of appeals docket, and the vast majority of new judges often have exclusively civil backgrounds.
“For someone who spent his or her entire career as a business or tort litigator, it’s a steep learning curve to get up on procedure (of criminal law),” Ruback said. “Ada won’t have that problem. The person [Gov. Perry] chose is just an outstanding choice.”
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