Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
What do a monkey, two chickens, a duck, an alligator and a dog have in common with a beaver? Quite a bit if you ask Buc-ee's, the popular convenience store and gas station that has earned a reputation for aggressively defending its trademarks in federal court.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we have details on the outcome of a discrimination lawsuit brought by a Black attorney in Houston who alleges he was kicked out of a bar at the Post Oak Hotel for wearing a “[Mark] Lanier 6.0 Trial Academy Master Class” hat, Whirlpool gets a $25 million trademark infringement win in the Eastern District of Texas, and the Texas Supreme Court passes on hearing a case involving the Judicial Branch Certification Commission’s regulation of licensed court reporters.
Plaintiffs firm Arnold & Itkin has appealed a Harris County trial judge’s decision that allowed the law firm Ahmad Zavitsanos & Mensing to stay on as defense counsel to Transocean in multidistrict litigation stemming from offshore workers’ injuries, arguing the ruling was “in error” and “an abuse of discretion.”
U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal is recommending closing a proceeding that was initiated to determine whether Jackson Walker should face any disciplinary action for its failure to disclose a romantic relationship between its former bankruptcy partner and a sitting bankruptcy judge. The order came about four months after the case was randomly assigned to her court.
On Thursday, the U.S. Trustee and Jackson Walker filed dueling motions to strike, with the law firm arguing the expert opinions of Richard J. Davis and Jonathan C. Lipson — a retired partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who now is in private practice, and a tenured bankruptcy law professor at Temple University-Beasley School of Law, respectively — and the U.S. Trustee arguing the same about an expert opinion from Renee Jefferson, who is the Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center.
The 18-page lawsuit seeking to claw back about $1.1 million in bankruptcy fees, along with other damages, was filed Tuesday in the bankruptcy court for the Southern District of Texas, Corpus Christi Division and brings claims for disgorgement for failure to make bankruptcy disclosures, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, an ExxonMobil unit is hit with a $5.6 million jury verdict in Houston, Amazon, after appealing to the Texas Supreme Court but before any real movement in the appeal, settles a wrongful death lawsuit in which it alleged a state district judge was going to force it to disclose confidential and proprietary information, and a trade secrets fight between competing compounding pharmacies heats up.
When Micheal W. Dobbs took his first in-house job and joined Texas Pacific Land Corporation in August 2020, the pandemic was raging and the company was in the midst of arguably the biggest change in its more than 132-year history: transitioning from operating as a liquidating business trust to a Delaware corporation. He is now the senior vice president, secretary and general counsel of TPL, which is one of the largest landowners in the state. Dobbs and his outside counsel at Sidley have been named as one of two finalists for the 2024 Business Litigation of the Year Award by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.
The en banc oral arguments came in a dispute between Abraham Watkins Nichols Agosto Aziz & Stogner and former associate Edward Festeryga, who the firm alleges tried to take its clients with him when he left. The whole court agreed to hear the dispute after Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan — who sat on the panel that sided with the law firm and affirmed a ruling that sent the case back to state court — called for the move in a July 2024 concurring opinion that said the crux of the court’s 1980 holding in In re Weaver was “incorrect.”
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Fifteenth Court of Appeals decides a case of first impression in favor of Google in the biometric data lawsuit Texas is pursuing, the state and W&T Offshore join forces to sue the outgoing Biden administration, and a jury in San Antonio determines a barbecue restaurant owes millions in a suit over hot barbecue sauce.
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