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Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury

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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.

Crypto Fraudsters Get 50 Months Each in Federal Prison

In Dallas, U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle sentences the two owners of Bitqyck to prison and orders them to pay $1.6 million each in federal income taxes.

March 14, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Prominent E-Discovery Firm Accused of Invading 10 Years of Personal Emails

In a civil suit in state court in Fort Worth, lawyer Rob Miller says the company, Consilio, went far beyond an agreement for discovery in a case involving one of his clients.

March 9, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Norton Rose Fulbright Wins Verdict for Shell in Dispute Over Crude Oil Sales

A state district court jury in Houston rejects a multimillion-dollar tortious-interference claim by an oil company represented by Rusty Hardin.

March 8, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

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

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Primary Sidebar

Features

  • ‘Picking the Right Word’: Troutman Pepper Locke’s Paul Coggins Talks Trials, Fiction Writing - Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas and Troutman Pepper Locke partner Paul Coggins spends his mornings writing legal thrillers before stepping into court to defend complex white-collar cases. With a new Cash McCahill novel hitting shelves and a securities-fraud trial on his docket, the veteran advocate reflects on decades of practice in Texas and why trial strategy and fiction writing draw on the same craft. October 15, 2026Mark Smith
  • Heritage Is a Skill Set - I grew up bilingual in New York, the daughter of an Italian-American father and a Dominican mother. I did not think much at the time about what that combination would mean for my career. I just knew both worlds were central to my identity. 

    Only later as a young associate at Milbank did I understand that moving naturally between those worlds was not simply part of my identity; it was a professional capability.
    October 15, 2026Melissa Raciti-Knapp

GCs, Lawyers & Firms

  • Sorrels Law Adds Nick Wagoner and Clifford Ashcroft-Smith as Partners - Nick Wagoner and Clifford Ashcroft-Smith have joined Sorrels Law as partners. Wagoner opened his own personal injury practice in Dallas in 2015 after beginning his career defending employers in state
  • Bissinger, Oshman, Williams & Strasburger Adds Equity Partner from Rusty Hardin & Associates
  • Husch Blackwell Elects Four Texas Lawyers to Partnership
  • FBT Gibbons Adds Labor and Employment Partner in Houston
  • Gibbs & Bruns Promotes Two to Partner
  • Buchalter Expands Texas Presence, Combines with Griffith Davison
  • Veteran IP Litigator Joins Jackson Walker
  • Gibson Dunn Powers Up IP Practice, Adds Mathews and Fountain
  • Catching Up with Hope Shimabuku
  • Brown Fox Taps Chief Judge O’Connor Clerk to Lead Fort Worth Expansion
More GCs, Lawyers & Firms

Lawyers in the News

Hover right to see full list

Chip Babcock
Chris Bankler
Jamie B. Beaber
David J. Beck
Bill Benitez
Jessica Berkowitz
Brent Bernell
Tyler Bexley
Shawn Blackburn
Michael Blankenship
Jeffrey Brill
Anita Brown
Ian Brown
Stuart Campbell
Jack Chadderdon
Paul Clement
Erin Nealy Cox
Scott Craig
Kevin Crews
Shamus Crosby
Hannah M. Crowe
Geoffrey Culbertson
Sean Cunningham
John Daywalt
Rajiv Dharnidharka
James Ducayet
Brian K. Erickson
Scott Everett
Weiru Fang
Elizabeth Freeman
Tad Freese
Melanie Fry
Geoff Gannaway
Paul Genender
John J. Gilluly III
Rodney Gilstrap
Andrew Gorham
John Greer
Joseph Grinstein
Matthew Haddad
Colleen Haile
Breen Haire
Shahmeer Halepota
Dionne Hamilton
Troy Harder
Rusty Hardin
Michael Hawes
Nathan Hecht
Stephen Hessler
Hillary Holmes
Marc Jaffe
Lauren Jenkins
David Jones
Atma Kabad
Susan Kennedy
David Kinder
Justin King
Allan Kirk
Melanie Koltermann
Doug Kubehl
Joe Laurel
Sang Lee
Steven Lockhart
Arthur Lotz
Barbara Lynn
Mike Lynn
Nora McGuffey
Stephanie McPhail
Mark Melton
Jeri Leigh Miller
Kimberly A. Moore
Mark Moore
Shelby Morgan
Alia Moses
Davis Mosmeyer III
Darren Nicholson
Eamon Nolan
Ivy Nowinski
Holland O’Neil
George Padis
Ian Peck
Jonathan Platt
Chase Proctor
Doug Rayburn
Joel Reese
Kevin Richardson
Andrew Rodheim
Seth Rubinson
Mazin Sbaiti
Ana Sanchez
Vincenzo Santini
Jeffrey Scharfstein
Robert Schroeder III
Scott Seidel
Steven Sexton
Ahmed Sidik
Robert Slovak
Emily Smith
Melissa R. Smith
Jonathon Soler
Robert Soza
Lande Spottswood
Craig Stanfield
Justin Stolte
Josh Teahen
Kelly Tidwell
Linda Tieh
Rafael B. de Toledo
Monica Uddin
Rhett Van Syoc
Rahul Vashi
Gabe Vazquez
Patrick Venter
Sarah Walden
Kandace Walter
Kyle Watson
Mikell Alan West
Noël Wise
Meng Xi

Firms in the News

Hover right to show full list

AZA
Baker Botts
The Bandas Law Firm
Beck Redden
Boies Schiller Flexner
Bracewell
Bradley Arant
Burns Charest
Clement & Murphy
Condon & Forsyth
DLA Piper
Dykema
Foley & Lardner
Gibson Dunn
Gillam & Smith
Haynes Boone
Holland & Knight
Jackson Walker
King & Spalding
Kirkland & Ellis
Latham & Watkins
Lynn Pinker
Mayer Brown
MoloLamken
Pamela Welch PLLC
Patton Tidwell Culbertson
Paul Hastings
Porter Hedges
The Probus Law Firm
Reese Marketos
Rusty Hardin & Associates
Sbaiti & Company
Sidley Austin
Simpson Thacher
Skadden
Squire Patton Boggs
Sullivan & Cromwell
Susman Godfrey
Troutman Pepper Locke
Vinson & Elkins
Weil
Willkie
Winston & Strawn

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