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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.

Insurer Must Cover Landry’s in Credit Card Hack, Appellate Court Rules

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit says the Houston-based restaurant chain’s insurance company is required to represent its client in litigation over an Internet breach that led to disclosure of millions of customers’ personal data.

July 22, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Texas Breeder of Rare Red Wagyu Cattle Wins $30M Verdict

During the trial in Fort Bend County, the plaintiff's lawyers from McKool Smith & Yetter Coleman claimed a breeding association failed to deliver promised DNA proof of a herd’s valuable lineage. Bruce Tomaso details the case.

July 19, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Fort Worth Oil Company Wins ‘Use It or Lose It’ Challenge to Permian Basin Leases

Centralia Permian, represented by Alston & Bird, prevailed in a Midland County jury trial over a Fortune 500 company’s failure to produce oil and gas ‘in paying quantities’ from a previously fruitful oilfield.

June 24, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Juries Belong in Court, Not on Zoom, Rusty Hardin Contends

A Houston company sued after a tragic trucking accident says that with $100 million on the line, it has a right to look jurors in the eye. Bruce Tomaso explains the viewpoints of both sides, which pit two prominent Houston trial lawyers against each other.

June 14, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Reese Marketos Lands High-Profile U.S. Prosecutor

Andrew Wirmani is leaving the U.S. Attorney's office to become a partner at Dallas litigation boutique Reese Marketos. Wirmani was lead prosecutor in several high-profile investigations, including that of the Forest Park Medical Center.

June 4, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Foes Battling Over Mexican Gold Mine Discover Rich Vein of — Litigation

In a trans-border tiff over a gold mine in Mexico, two companies — one American and one Canadian — have managed to unearth a motherlode of litigation. Experts say their grueling court battles across several international venues point up the shortcomings of binding arbitration agreements and their limited ability to compel business partners not to be jerks. The Lawbook's Bruce Tomaso explains.

June 1, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

For AZA musician-turned-lawyer, the courtroom is just a different stage

Foster Johnson was only a high school freshman in Houston when his father, a workaholic corporate lawyer at a silk-stocking firm, died of a stroke. Resolved not to follow in his footsteps, Johnson and his brother Alec took the equal-and-opposite path: they formed a rock band called Vegas DeMilo.

For a decade, Johnson made a go of the rock life — with better success than most. But in the end, he found himself back on his father's path — as a top-notch trial attorney at Houston's AZA litigation boutique. The Lawbook's Bruce Tomaso chronicles his transition, and the ways that being a serious rock musician and a trial attorney may not be as different as you'd expect.

May 27, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Midland Jury Personal Injury Award Sets County Record

A jury in Midland on Friday returned a $5.9 million verdict against an oil field company from Glen Rose and an employee who killed four people while speeding to work in a rainstorm. The verdict is believed to be the largest ever in a personal injury case in Midland County.

May 13, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Forest Park Fraud Prosecutor: ‘It Comes Down to Greed and Arrogance’

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Wirmani has never spoken publicly about the unprecedented federal criminal charges he brought against 21 Forest Park Medical Center officials, including nine surgeons and doctors.

Until now.

In an exclusive in-depth interview with Texas Lawbook reporter Bruce Tomaso, Wirmani discusses the tips that launched the investigation, the innovative legal strategy he and his team employed, and how the Forest Park prosecution success is being replicated in other jurisdictions.

April 5, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

Former Partner Sues Polsinelli for Sexual Orientation Discrimination

A Houston bankruptcy lawyer has sued his former employer, Polsinelli, alleging that he was fired because he’s gay. The plaintiff is being represented by Bill Brewer III and Bill Brewer IV.

March 31, 2021 Bruce Tomaso

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Features

  • P.S. — TX Appleseed, V&E and Witherite Making the Holiday Spirit - The Texas Lawbook will announce next week the finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards, including Achievement in Pro Bono and Public Service and Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion. In addition, the Texas Lawbook Foundation is seeking interests for its board of directors. More details in this week's column, plus, we have two firms — Vinson & Elkins and the Witherite Law Group — and a group of lawyer volunteers led by Michael Hurst that are spreading the holiday spirit early, and TODAY ONLY we have an extraordinary opportunity to help Texas Appleseed achieve some of its amazing public service work. December 5, 2025Krista Torralva & Mark Curriden
  • The 1915 Letter to the Editor Championed Women Serving on Juries - When I was a teenager, my grandmother told me that her grandmother, “Nana,” marched for women’s suffrage.

    What impressed my grandmother was not just that Nana walked the streets with throngs of other women clamoring for voting rights; it was that she did so despite being a woman who personally had little to gain from equal suffrage.

    Nana was a married, middle-aged mother who, as my grandmother put it, “wore black chiffon at night.” In other words, she was a woman of means. As such, Nana benefited from the status quo. Practically speaking, she had reason to resist change. Still, she believed women should have the right to vote. So, she marched.

    She also wrote.
    December 3, 2025Kelly Rentzel

GCs, Lawyers & Firms

  • K&L Gates Moves to New Dallas Digs in Uptown - The firm, which called Comerica Bank Tower home for close to four decades, is also consolidating its Fort Worth office with the relocation. The move coincides with a “very concerted” growth initiative in Texas.
  • Holland & Knight Recruits Texas A&M GC Ray Bonilla
  • VC Advisor Carmelo Gordian Departs A&O Shearman for Holland & Knight
  • Warm Texas Welcome: Arizona Firm Joins Forces With San Antonio’s Schmoyer Reinhard
  • Mike Androvett Joins Texas Lawbook Foundation Board
  • Paul Hastings Add Two Litigators from Winston & Strawn 
  • Brink’s Adds Maria Fernandez as Associate General Counsel
  • Sheppard Mullin Grows Corporate Capabilities in Dallas
  • Austin Emerging Growth/Venture Capital Partner Michelle Kwan Jumps to Jackson Walker
  • Haynes Boone Adds Six Lawyers in Dallas
More GCs, Lawyers & Firms

Lawyers in the News

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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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