Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Michelle Casady is based in Houston and covers litigation and appeals — including trials, breaking news and industry trends — for The Texas Lawbook.
Michelle Casady has been a reporter in Texas since January 2009. She's covered crime at The Bryan-College Station Eagle, courts at the San Antonio Express-News and civil litigation for Law360. In July 2022, she joined The Texas Lawbook.
Her reporting has included covering arrests, trials, plea deals and settlements, executions, natural and manmade disasters, colorful characters and various oddities.
She lives in Houston with her husband Matt, a sweet dog Hurricane Harvey brought into their lives, and a confident cat who keeps everyone in line. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Texas Tech University and was a 2018 fellow of the Loyola Marymount University Journalist Law School.
You can reach Michelle at michelle.casady@texaslawbook.net or (713) 614-7929.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Texas State Securities Board says it was the entity that determined NFL star Travis Kelce was the victim of a Ponzi scheme, a dispute between concrete industry competitors is dropped and the Texas Supreme Court is urged to determine courts here have jurisdiction over a $500 million fight between Brazilian mining companies.
A fight between two former business partners who made tens of millions of dollars together building a futures prop firm in Austin before the relationship soured and spilled into separate fights in state and federal court in Texas recently ended in rare fashion. The plaintiff, Leo Riot, who in December 2024 had accused Darrell Martin and John Skelton, his former partners at Apex Trader Funding, of defrauding him, breaching contracts and misappropriating his intellectual property issued a public statement in August conceding none of his claims were true.
The appeal to the Texas Supreme Court comes about a month after the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas determined the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine required the dismissal of nearly all the claims Cindy Clemishire brought against Robert Morris, Gateway Church and three of its elders. Clemishire argued that ruling transformed the doctrine from “a tool of qualified restraint to a totalizing shield that leaves churches immune from judicial oversight.”
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a Houston immigration attorney is accused of defrauding her clients, X Corp. settles an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in Fort Worth and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit hands a loss to Lucid in a constitutional challenge to Texas’ ban on direct-to-consumer auto sales based on precedent they doubt.
During a hearing Wednesday morning, a lawyer for the U.S. Trustee reiterated arguments to Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Eduardo V. Rodriguez explaining why the watchdog has standing to obtain the relief it seeks via vacatur motions filed in the Jackson Walker fee dispute.
SmartDisk, a deposition video and production company that started in Houston more than 20 years ago, was vindicated by a panel of Texas Business Court jurors Tuesday afternoon when they agreed a former business partner owes the company about $6.4 million in damages for breach of an agreement.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we offer details on two high-dollar disputes involving the leasing of railcars, the former chief financial officer of a Dallas nonprofit goes to prison for embezzling $2 million, and the parties that lost a patent case seeking more than $400 million in damages ask for a redo.
After two years in operation, the Texas Business Court has proven to be a nimble, sophisticated venue for resolving complex business litigation. But there’s one issue that represents an “existential” threat to the continued success and growth of the court, Administrative Presiding Judge Grant Dorfman recently told The Texas Lawbook: a shortage of permanent courtrooms.
A jury in Houston will decide whether deposition video and production company SmartDisk is owed about $6.4 million in breach of contract damages or if its former business partner, Lexitas, properly terminated the parties’ agreement and owes nothing.
Alan Albright was appointed to the federal bench in 2018 and quickly implemented local rules and procedures that turned his courtroom into a preferred venue for patent disputes. He stepped down from the role last month.
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