Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The 119-page lawsuit brings claims for breach of contract, professional negligence, fraud, fraudulent inducement, fraud by nondisclosure, fraud by concealment, negligent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, defamation, business disparagement, and seeks indemnification.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we preview a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by Landry’s that’s slated for trial this week, another trial in the 26-year dispute between David Clapper and American Realty Investors is averted, and the Fifth Circuit sends a malpractice lawsuit against Beck Redden to state court.
Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock has been on the court since 2018 and has been elevated to fill the chief justice position left vacant by Nathan Hecht’s retirement. Hecht had helmed the court since 2013. Also on Monday, the governor named James P. Sullivan as the newest member of the Texas Supreme Court. Both men formerly served as general counsel to the governor.
Juries in the Eastern District of Texas handed out the largest and second-largest awards of the year and five of the Top 10. But no jury in the state cracked the $1 billion damages award threshold in a single case in 2024.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Match Group draws a shareholder class action lawsuit in California, Medicaid fraud whistleblowers get a piece of a $212.3 million settlement, and a Harris County District Court judge sees a public reprimand against her vacated by a court of special review.
While the court’s original order lifting the injunction, issued Monday, was signed by the three judges who issued it — Judges Carl E. Stewart, Catharina Haynes and Stephen A. Higginson — the subsequent order putting the nationwide injunction back in place, issued Thursday, was not signed, but entered instead by the clerk of the court at the direction of the court.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Fifth Circuit explains the limitations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in allowing a lawsuit against Salesforce to proceed, the Houston city council greenlights a settlement in a revenge porn case involving members of the fire department and a multimillion-dollar jury award in a case involving a contract to construct a natural gas plant is slashed.
In three orders issued Wednesday and Thursday, Harris County District Judge Rabeea Collier sanctioned Transocean and its former legal team for “egregious” conduct in the multidistrict litigation. The judge declined to disqualify the company’s new legal team, AZA, from continuing its representation of the drilling company.
Recent developments in the dispute stemming from new Federal Bureau of Ocean Management bond rules targeting offshore energy companies include a question of whether the case belongs in federal court and if Vinson & Elkins should be allowed to represent two insurers after previously representing W&T for nearly a decade.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Whataburger hires Holland & Knight to defend a patent infringement lawsuit in East Texas, and DLA Piper turns to a team from Vinson & Elkins to defend it in a legal malpractice lawsuit in Harris County over its alleged employment of a “fake lawyer.”
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