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.
This week, the first contested final judgment in a case before the Texas Business Court was entered. Proponents of the new court argued it would provide an avenue for parties to obtain quick decisions in complex business disputes and Monday’s final judgment, issued just shy of eight months after the case was filed in the business court, seems to support that.
E. Lawrence “Larry” Vincent joined the firm after nine years at Burns Charest. During his time there, he was the co-lead attorney in a successful representation of a group of Houston homeowners alleging government mismanagement of reservoirs lead to flooding of their properties during Hurricane Harvey.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, an attorney who cited made-up cases to the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas gets sanctioned, American Airlines is sued by a former pilot who alleges he was shortchanged on disability benefits, and the Texas Supreme Court answers a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in one of the final weeks of its term.
At the end of a roughly two-hour hearing, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez approved a $50.5 million settlement with directors and officers of GWG, a $30 million settlement with the law firm Mayer Brown, an $8.5 million settlement with Texas accounting firm Whitley Penn and a $2.3 million settlement with brothers Jon R. and Steven F. Sabes, the original founders of GWG.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, names as defendants David Jones, Elizabeth Freeman, The Law Office of Liz Freeman, Jackson Walker and Porter Hedges. GWG Holdings bondholders allege those parties were part of a conspiracy to “prey upon distressed entities for their own financial gain.”
The widow of an Arlington firefighter who died while celebrating his 10th wedding anniversary at the all-inclusive Royalton Chic resort in Cancun, Mexico, was awarded $31.27 million by a jury this week that found the hotel liable for negligence. Elijah Snow, 35, died in July 2021 and his widow, Jamie, filed suit in June 2022, naming as defendants RCM Hotel, its parent company Blue Diamond Hotels and Resorts and a travel agency that was later dropped from the suit.
Imagine knowing what a jury is going to do — whether they will find liability, how they will apportion it and how much they will award in damages — before voir dire even begins. “The last five trials I’ve gone to I’ve been armed with the answer to those questions before the trial even starts,” Brent Walker of Brent Walker Law told The Texas Lawbook in a recent interview. “It’s sort of like playing poker and knowing what the cards are going to be.”
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a lawsuit is filed against the organizers of a cheer competition that took place at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and ended in what plaintiffs call a chaotic stampede, and the Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling that rescinded punishment doled out by the Commission for Lawyer Discipline.
Roughly one month after adding former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht to its ranks, the firm has tapped Jeff Oldham to be the firmwide chair of its appellate section. Oldham had most recently been an appellate partner in Bracewell’s Houston office.
This week, the law firm Holland & Knight and its partner Bill Banowsky asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur to dismiss a bankruptcy trustee’s fraud lawsuit against them for failure to state a claim. Holland & Knight and Banowsky argued the trustee had obscured “the facts upon which it must rely for wrongdoing against defendants in this case.”
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