Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
AUSTIN – Vietnam veteran Phil Johnson was in mid-career as a military pilot when a distinguished law career intervened. These days, however, the Texas Supreme Court jurist is focused on the legal needs of today's military men and women, and those interests were noted last week at the annual Texas Access to Justice luncheon.
For nine years Burlington Resources deducted post-production costs from royalties paid to Amber Harvest for development in the Eagle Ford. Then came the 2015 Chesapeake v. Hyder decision, and now Amber Harvest is asking SCOTX to make Burlington reimburse them. Janet Elliott details their arguments before the court.
A 46-year-old property tax case was finally settled by the Texas Supreme Court. Their ruling in the inter-county dispute, often compared to Dickens' famously epic litigation, was settled in favor of San Patricio County.
The dispute involves high-risk surplus lines insurance commonly purchased by drillers, and is being closely watched for its impact on that market.
Dale Wainwright stepped to the podium at the Texas Supreme Court on Monday, looked at his former colleague Nathan Hecht and made a simple request: End a dispute between two counties that's beginning to resemble Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
AUSTIN – (July 2) – In a 5-3 decision, the Texas Supreme Court Friday ruled against an effort to remove from office a county hospital district trustee who wanted to zero out the district’s tax rate. The state not only failed to establish a case for the trustee’s removal, it might owe attorney’s fees under the state’s “anti-SLAPP” statute. The Texas Lawbook has the story.
The Texas Supreme Court Friday delivered a one-two punch to a group of dentists and a state contractor who were pointing fingers at each other over allegations of massive fraud in the state’s Medicaid orthodontic program.
SCOTX last week ruled in yet another dispute pitting the plain language of oil and gas leases against the variable technology of the industry. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that the Fourth Court of Appeals erred when it imputed a more stringent requirement for the placement an offset well in the Eagle Ford Shale than either the actual lease or the realities of horizontal drilling allowed. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
(May 31) – The Texas Supreme Court tried to simplify its earlier rulings on oil and gas titles with a remarkably simple principle: a new lease supplants an old lease unless the new lease says it doesn’t. The ruling is bad news for TRO-X L.P., who sought to collect from Anadarko on a “back-in” option in a lease long-since transferred. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
Ten years ago, Carmen Dusek found herself square in the middle of the largest child custody case ever litigated. The case involved charges of child abuse and rape in a remote compound run fundamentalist religious sect run by Warren Jeffs whose Biblical beliefs included a particularly strident form of polygamy. The case came to include scores of lawyers who volunteered from afar to assure adequate legal representation for some 400 children. She recalls the pride and disappointment to Janet Elliott in The Texas Lawyer.
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