Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Juliana Morehead Sersen, who spent 12 years with the entity that manages the Texas electric grid, says she’s still sorting out what role, if any, she will play in Baker Bott’s cases stemming from last February’s deadly winter storm.
A federal jury in Texarkana found Dr. Ray W. Ng, a podiatrist with clinics in Allen and Terrell, not guilty of taking part in a multi-state bribery and kickback scam involving referrals to genetic-testing labs.
A state appellate court rejected San Antonio’s claim of exorbitant pricing by ERCOT during Winter Storm Uri, but did not address the key question of whether the operator of the Texas power grid has sovereign immunity from lawsuits.
The verdict by a federal jury in Florida is the largest to date in an ongoing wave of suits alleging that 3M sold the U.S. government faulty protective equipment, resulting in hearing damage to thousands of military personnel.
The penalty, the second largest of its kind in U.S. history, ends a federal investigation that began after two nurses at Clements University Hospital were found dead from opioid overdoses.
Scores of wrongful death, personal injury and property damage cases are pending against ERCOT since last February’s crippling winter storm. None of those cases can move forward until the appellate courts decide whether ERCOT is a state governmental agency protected from litigation under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Two Texas courts of appeals — the Fourth Court in San Antonio and the Fifth Court in Dallas — recently heard oral arguments from lawyers on both sides of the issue. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
Houston trial lawyers say Judge Sylvia A. Matthews is smart, fair, well-prepared, smart, organized, hard-working, smart, efficient, decisive … and smart. Those traits well serve Matthews, an experienced commercial litigator and trial judge, as she presides over pretrial matters in more than 150 (and counting) lawsuits stemming from one of the deadliest, costliest disasters in Texas history – Winter Storm Uri, the icy blizzard that paralyzed Texas and its electric grid last February.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston rejects claim by defendants that "through no fault of their own" they can’t access needed records and witnesses because of political upheaval in the South American nation.
A hearing Friday on plaintiff lawyer Randy Sorrels’s motion for entry of judgment dealt only with relatively minor calculations of a just sum – an indication that both sides expect District Judge Ravi Sandill to uphold in whole or large part last week’s jury verdict on behalf of Ulysses Cruz, who sued Allied Aviation Fueling Co. of Houston.
If anything, the noted Houston plaintiffs’ lawyer claims, jurors should have given Ulysses Cruz, a paralyzed airport service worker, more for the lifetime of pain and anguish he faces after being hit by a van on a tarmac at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. And Sorrels believes the verdict exceeding one-third of a billion dollars will survive appeal.
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