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.
The state’s high court heard oral arguments Wednesday morning in the lawsuit brought by Sheema Shaik against BRP-Rotax GmbH that asks it to determine whether Texas courts have specific jurisdiction over a foreign manufacturer based on an allegedly defective engine.
Cheryl Butler, a former Southern Methodist University law professor, sued the university and several former colleagues in 2016, bringing claims for defamation, fraud and conspiracy to defame. She appealed to the Fifth Circuit in January 2023, the same month U.S. District Judge Ada Brown dismissed her case with prejudice after agreeing that the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act preempted the claims. The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in the case that will determine whether Butler will be allowed to proceed with a defamation claim against her former coworkers, who she alleges played a role in her being denied tenure in 2016.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we detail the outside lawyers Texas has hired to bring suit against some of the largest private equity firms in the world alleging they conspired to depress the market for coal and a Beaumont personal injury lawyer gets sanctioned for using Claude to write a brief that included made-up cases and quotes.
Guardant Health and Natera had lodged false advertising claims against each other, with Guardant filing suit first in May 2021 and Natera following with counterclaims in June 2021. The jury, which was seated Nov. 4 and heard 10 days of testimony before returning a verdict Monday, awarded Guardant $75 million in damages for corrective advertising, about $41.5 million for disgorgement of Natera’s profits and $175.5 million in punitive damages.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review a Fifth Circuit decision against the Federal Communications Commission, we identify the Dallas lawyers who helped secure a nearly $100 million verdict for the family of Botham Jean, and Vedder Price is tapped to represent NFL quarterback Baker Mayfield in a $12 million family feud.
A jury had sided with Nissan in March, issuing a take-nothing verdict in the lawsuit brought by Deana A. Rios following the April 2022 death of her husband. In a 46-page opinion issued Thursday and authored by Chief Justice Terry Adams, the panel held Harris County District Judge Fredericka Phillips had abused her discretion by granting Rios a new trial, in part by relying on inadmissible testimony from some of the jurors about deliberations in the case.
According to audio of the hearing available on the docket, Judge Isgur told counsel for the insurers about four minutes before he issued an oral ruling from the bench dismissing the subrogation that he wasn’t inclined to adopt his arguments. “I’m not even following a little bit of your argument, just so you know,” he said. “It seems obvious that you’re wrong.”
In an opinion dated Nov. 12 but not published to the court’s website until Monday, the panel found that “the trial judge has abused her discretion by failing to perform her ministerial duty to rule on Megatel’s motion to compel arbitration despite Megatel’s numerous attempts to set a hearing and request a ruling.”
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Kroger strikes an $83 million deal to bring an end to opioid epidemic claims in Texas, the state is given a deadline to reply to a rehearing request in the longrunning litigation over the safety of the foster care system and a fried chicken trademark spat lands in the Eastern District of Texas.
Consilio, which claims to be the largest e-discovery firm in the world, committed a Class B misdemeanor offense when it accessed a woman’s computer without consent, a jury recently determined. Rob Miller of Miller Copeland, who represented the plaintiff, told The Texas Lawbook he believes this is the first lawsuit of its kind to be decided by a jury.
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