Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Recent data from Lex Machina shows Texas federal courts are a national hotspot for trade secret litigation, but the number of lawsuits filed here aren’t enough to crack the top five. The Southern and Northern Districts of Texas were the busiest.
Elizabeth King joins Houston-based intellectual property boutique Heim, Payne & Chorush as of counsel. She will lead the firm’s expanded trademark litigation and appeals practice.
Phillip Ragler joins Dallas-based Hamilton Wingo as a partner as the firm continues to bolster its personal injury and wrongful death practice. Ragler was an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida before joining the firm.
Houston litigator Michael Murphy has joined the boutique law firm Yetter Coleman as a partner. Murphy was with Winston & Strawn for six years, where he served as co-chair of the firm’s Houston litigation practice.
The three-day trial ended Wednesday, with the jurors deliberating for a day before awarding parents and their young son $1.1 billion in damages. The boy was assaulted by his stepfather, a great-grandson of one of the original investors of Humble Oil, and suffered life-altering injuries.
A daughter’s lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, alleging its product contained asbestos that caused her mother’s life-ending mesothelioma cancer, has concluded in a settlement. The settlement reached during the first week of trial was “unexpected.”
In this edition of Asked & Answered, Beck Redden partner Russell Post shares how he went from resisting the idea of attending law school to contemplating a career as a law professor. For Post, who recently secured a win at the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming a law professor is no longer a goal of his, but teaching isn’t out of the question.
In this edition of the Litigation Roundup, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of a Mississippi street preacher, a Gibson Dunn partner and former judge led an amicus brief in Anthropic case against the Department of War, as well as the Fifth Circuit held Corelle Brands retained indemnification rights tied to previously completed purchase orders following its Chapter 11 reorganization and more.
Dallas-based Rogge Dunn Group has filed a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration claim against Goldman Sachs, alleging that it committed age discrimination, wrongful termination and unlawful withholding of earned deferred compensation. The complaint seeks more than $2 million in damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
A California judge has rejected a jury’s $950 million award of punitive damages against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. The jury awarded $16 million in compensatory damages in October 2025.
This is just one of many cases Dallas-based Dean Omar Branham Shirley is involved with against J&J at the moment.
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