Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a lawsuit Mercuria Energy American filed against a former trader won’t be going to trial after all, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gets a $7 million final judgment in a case against a forex trader from Houston it alleged was operating a Ponzi scheme.
The group of 12 downstream property owners in this case have alleged their damages total $22 million. Their lawyer, Richard Mithoff, who represents an additional 502 of the thousands of downstream plaintiffs whose claims are still pending, said he’s hopeful a trial date for the damages portion of the case will be set soon.
U.S. District Judge Alan Albright is expected to announce Wednesday his plans to resign from the Western District of Texas bench he has held for nearly eight years and to step down in August.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Winston & Strawn is representing the NFL Players Association in a federal lawsuit in Houston over the handling of a grievance and AZA and Beck Redden prevail on appeal in a California trade secrets dispute over a penile implant.
For two hours Tuesday morning, 12 jurors and one alternate seated in a Harris County courtroom were told they would be determining who was responsible for a deadly explosion that rocked a West Houston neighborhood in 2020, claiming lives and damaging or destroying more than 450 businesses and homes. (2020 file photo by Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP)
In a tag-team closing argument Monday afternoon, two attorneys representing a client facing a $432.7 million damages request by Energy Transfer told Business Court Judge Grant Dorfman the amount being sought is both unfounded and a drastic overreach.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a distributor of energy drink Alani is sued by the family of a 17-year-old girl who died after consuming the beverages, and Samsung tells a Texas judge the invalidation of a patent by a California judge means it's entitled to a new trial in a dispute that had ended with a $78 million verdict against it.
A group of 13 shareholders of biopharmaceutical tech company Sorrento Therapeutics allege in a new lawsuit that Dallas-based Jackson Walker’s decision to file its bankruptcy case in the Southern District of Texas was done to enrich the firm at the expense of the shareholders.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a San Antonio-based Jackson Walker partner is tapped to represent a man in a $37 million bid-rigging conspiracy case in Hawaii, and Camp Mystic asks a Travis County district judge to send litigation over the fatal July 4 flood to arbitration.
When it came time to pick the jury for a landmark, bellwether social media addiction trial against Meta and Google, Mark Lanier had a choice to make: Did he want a jury more likely to find liability, or a jury more likely to maximize damages? “In this case, I made the choice for a liability jury,” Lanier told The Texas Lawbook in an interview Thursday. “In this case, the most important thing was to win. I told the team, we may win and only win $250,000, but I want to make sure we win.”
© Copyright 2026 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
