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Bruce Tomaso

Bruce Tomaso spent more than 30 years as a writer and editor at The Dallas Morning News. When asked what positions he held there, he usually says it’s easier to list those he didn’t.

As enterprise editor on The News’s breaking news desk in the summer of 2016, he played a key role in covering the downtown shooting spree that left five police officers dead. For its coverage, The News was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting.

He spent most of 1997 in Denver covering the federal criminal trials of Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Four years later, he covered McVeigh’s execution.

His first major reporting assignment for The Texas Lawbook was a retrospective on the 20th anniversary of the $119.6 million verdict for 10 young men who’d been molested as children by Rudy Kos, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. The stories earned Bruce and his Lawbook editor, Allen Pusey, the Dallas Bar Association’s 2018 Stephen Philbin Award for Feature Writing.

In 2019, he covered the seven-week medical fraud trial of nine physicians, healthcare executives and others associated with Forest Park Medical Center, a now-defunct Dallas surgical hospital.

He’s a member of the Alumni Hall of Fame at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He and his wife, Dallas attorney Patricia A. Nolan, have one grown son, who is smarter than either of them.

He will drop everything, including preposterous sums of money, to see Lady Gaga, Notre Dame football, or the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.

You can reach Bruce at bruce.tomaso@texaslawbook.net.

Under Judicial Pressure, Brazos, ERCOT to Mediate $1.9B Dispute for What’s ‘Best for Texans’

Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones encourages the two sides to reach an agreement and move forward for ‘the person that lives in a trailer in Central Texas… that can’t afford a doubling of their electric bill.’

March 3, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

CEO: Brazos in Great Shape Until Crippling Uri Bills

Clifton Karnei also testified that the emergency pricing of electricity during the storm at $9,000 per megawatt hour – hundreds of times the normal rate – did nothing to accomplish what state regulators intended.

March 1, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Brazos Execs Knew Electric Prices Would Soar Even Before Winter Storm Uri Hit

Brazos, the state’s largest and oldest electric co-op, contends that it was plunged into bankruptcy by the $9,000-per-megawatt-hour price imposed by ERCOT during the deadly storm.

February 28, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Judge Tells Former PUC Chair: ‘I Am Disappointed at Your Lack of Candor’

The chief federal bankruptcy judge in Houston publicly questioned the truthfulness of the former chair of the Public Utility Commission who testified Thursday under oath about her role in the Winter Storm Uri power-grid fiasco.

February 24, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Jurors Take One Hour to Toss $26M Life Insurance Claims

After eight days of trial, a Houston federal court jury dispatched life-insurance claims by a woman accused of faking her husband’s death, answering two essential questions: Did she prove her husband was dead (no) and did the insurance companies prove he misrepresented in his application for the insurance (yes).

February 23, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Widow: $26 Million Life Insurance Was Surprise

Blanca Monica Villareal, accused in a civil suit of faking her husband’s death in Mexico City to swindle insurers Transamerica and Prudential, claimed that she knew nothing about his finances. Testifying in Spanish, she told Houston jurors she couldn’t read the insurance policies and didn’t know what they were when she found them, because they were in English.

February 18, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Mikal Watts Grills Investigator Who Concluded $26M Life-Insurance Claim Was for Mexico City Man Still Alive

If a Mexico City businessman faked his death in 2016 to steal $26 million from two U.S. life-insurance giants, he’s done a remarkable job of lying low since, the lawyer

February 17, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Investigator to Jury in $26M Life-Insurance Case: Two People Identified the Insured as Alive More than a Year After His ‘Death’

A private investigator testified Wednesday that two people at a Mexico City office where he was searching for the supposedly dead Eduardo Rosendi, flashing Rosendi’s photo, told him the man in the photo worked there as an accountant – and one had seen him earlier that day. The investigator was a critical witness in the third day of a federal trial in which a $26 million insurance payout is in the balance – if Rosendi is not dead. But Mikal C. Watts, the beneficiary’s attorney, should get his chance at cross-examination Thursday.

February 16, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

$26M Insurance Claim: Fraud ‘So Obvious,’ or Investigation Not ‘Indisputable’

The plaintiff’s attorney, Mikal C. Watts, on cross-examination of the insurers’ lead witness, attacked his investigator’s thoroughness and his conclusions as hardly indisputable.

February 16, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Two Laredo Doctors, Three Dallas-area Labs Accused of $300M Kickback Scheme

A federal indictment in Fort Worth charges 10 people with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. Investigators say the labs bribed doctors to order needless tests, which were billed to Medicare and other federal health-insurance programs.

February 10, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

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Primary Sidebar

Features

  • P.S. — From Corporate Counsel to Clemency Crusader: Brittany K. Barnett’s Journey to Criminal Justice Reform - Last week, I had the honor of interviewing Brittany K. Barnett at the Texas General Counsel Forum Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter breakfast about her impressive legal career. Barnett’s start was in accounting. From there, she went to work as a corporate finance attorney and in-house M&A counsel. By night, she dedicated herself to pro bono efforts, working on President Barack Obama’s historic Clemency Project 2014. Barnett ultimately left her job and founded The Buried Alive Project, a powerful initiative to represent individuals sentenced to life without parole for nonviolent drug offenses. Her work has led to clemency for nearly two dozen clients across three presidential administrations. She’s also the author of a best-selling memoir, A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom, and she is working on a second book. I was so inspired by her story that I wanted to share our interview with a wider audience in this week's P.S. Column.  May 30, 2025Krista Torralva
  • 2025 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards Celebration - More than 225 leaders of the corporate legal profession in Houston celebrated the 2025 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards, which recognized general counsel and senior managing counsel from companies ranging from Phillips 66 and Shell to Enbridge, Baker Hughes and Transocean. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook hosted 20 corporate in-house counsel who had been nominated for awards in 14 categories, from Rookie of the Year and Lifetime Achievement to M&A Transaction and Business Litigation of the Year. May 27, 2025Mark Curriden

GCs, Lawyers & Firms

  • Fisher Phillips Hires Reed Smith Partner to be Regional Managing Partner in Houston - Fisher Phillips on Monday announced it has hired Reed Smith labor and employment partner Emily Harbison, who will serve as the firm’s regional managing partner in Houston.
  • President Names Career Prosecutor as NDTX U.S. Attorney
  • Megan Knell Joins Steptoe & Johnson
  • Kim Bueno Among Kirkland’s Litigation Haul from King & Spalding
  • O’Melveny Adds Experienced Trial Lawyer in Houston
  • Simpson Thacher Hires Project Finance Veteran
  • Womble Adds Veteran Biz Litigator in its Houston Office
  • Barnes & Thornburg Lands Veteran Louisiana Litigator for its Dallas Office
  • Condon Tobin Hires Team from Libby Sparks
  • Sorrels Law Launches Beaumont Office with Veteran Maritime Litigator David James
More GCs, Lawyers & Firms

Lawyers in the News

Hover right to see full list

Reem Abdelrazik
Doug Bacon
Harry Beaudry
Jonathan Benloulou
Gene Besen
Doug Bland
Jacqui Bogucki
Vera De Brito de Gyarfas
David Buck
Nora Burke
T.J. Campbell
Wayne Chan
Michael Considine
Mogan Copher
James Cowen
Kevin Crews
Samantha Crispin
Dawud Crooms
Shamus Crosby
Clint Culpepper
Brock Degeyter
Nick Dhesi
William Eiland
Austin Elam
Miles Emery
Bill Finnegan
David Gail
Adam Garmezy
Sami Ghubril
Breen Haire
Kim Hicks
J. Dean Hinderliter
Nicole Islinger
James Johnston
Atma Kabad
John Kaercher
Erin Kaufman
Paul Kukish
Thomas Laughlin
Oscar Fernando Leija
Emily Lichtenheld
Rob Little
Ryan Logan
Bryan Loocke
Katy Lukaszewski
Ryan Lynch
Ryan Maierson
Benjamin J. Martin
Madeline McCune
Sean McFarlane
Richard McGee
Sarah McLean
Sameer Mohan
Andrew Monk
Charlie Ofner
Stephen Olson
Joe Orien
Zach Parker
John Pitts
Benjamin Potter
Brendan Quigley
Kevin Richardson
Alex Robertson
Jason Rocha
Julian Seiguer
Mark Sloan
Chad Smith
Lande Spottswood
John Stribling
Vanessa Sutherland
Tanner Sykes
Martha Todd
Michael Vardanian
Thomas Verity
Douglas Warner
Kyle Watson
Luke Weedon
John Wetwiska
Sean Wheeler
Debbie Yee

Firms in the News

Hover right to show full list

Akin
Baker Botts
Bracewell
Haynes Boone
Holland & Knight
Kirkland & Ellis
Latham & Watkins
Morgan Lewis
Pillsbury
Porter Hedges
Sheppard Mullin
Sidley
Simpson Thacher
V&E
Weil
White & Case
Willkie

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