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 Fifth Circuit asks for the Texas Supreme Court’s input in a drowning death case, the city of Uvalde agrees to release its records related to the Robb Elementary shooting, and Munck Wilson Mandala is dealt a blow in a RICO lawsuit it brought against the owners of a Dallas building where it leases office space.
Three amicus briefs — from Disability Rights Texas, the Texas Business Law Foundation and Texans for Lawsuit Reform — have been filed in the case. While the groups seek different outcomes, Disability Rights Texas and Texans for Lawsuit Reform agree on one issue: the Texas Supreme Court should take the case and issue a decision on the constitutionality issue.
At the daylong hearing, Chief Judge Eduardo Rodriguez also denied a request to subpoena four years of phone and text logs from former bankruptcy Judge David Jones’ government-issued cell phone that the requesting party said was intended to investigate whether any ex parte communications had taken place between Jones and the attorneys who appeared before him. Chief Judge Rodriguez said he plans to quickly decide whether to partially or fully unseal a transcript and audio of the sealed portion of Wednesday’s hearing.
A law professor and a prominent litigator spoke to The Lawbook about the merits of X's new lawsuit against a group of advertisers and discussed why the case may have been filed in federal court in Wichita Falls. “Forum shopping is definitely going on here,” C. Paul Rogers III, current professor and former dean at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, told The Lawbook in an interview Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the Wichita Falls Division of the Northern District of Texas and has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed C. O’Connor. John Sullivan and Jace Yarbrough of S|L Law are representing X Corp. in the suit that names the World Federation of Advertisers, Unilever PLC, Unilever United States, Mars Incorporated, CVS Health Corporation and RSTED A/S as defendants.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, individuals accused of bilking the government out of millions via Covid-19 testing and dental scams are sentenced to prison, Austin-based CrowdStrike gears up to fight litigation related to a global software outage and the Fifth Circuit seeks the Texas Supreme Court’s input in a lawsuit brought by a former Southern Methodist University law professor who was denied tenure.
Dolcefino Communications, a for-hire investigative firm run by former longtime Houston television news reporter Wayne Dolcefino, had argued the specific dollar amounts the nonprofit paid to each performer during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo had to be disclosed in response to his open records request. The First Court of Appeals panel determined otherwise in this case of first impression.
Ashley Moore, who most recently served as the Dallas office managing partner at Michelman & Robinson, joined Greenberg Traurig’s intellectual property and litigation practices this week as a shareholder. She spoke to The Lawbook about trends she's seeing in the Eastern and Western District of Texas.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we detail a case where an intermediate appellate court seems dubious about a real estate developer’s claim that he missed a deadline to appeal because he suffered a stroke, Southwest Airlines is hit with a suit over an alleged in-flight sexual assault, and a woman accused of stealing more than $100 million from the government goes to prison.
The Fifth Circuit majority zeroed in on the “double-layered delegation” of the authority to set the tax rate for the universal service fund, which is used to subsidize phone and internet services for rural and low-income areas, as well as schools, hospitals and libraries, across the country. With the holding, the conservative Fifth Circuit did what the Sixth, Eleventh and D.C. circuits had declined to do in cases brought by the conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research against the FCC raising this same issue.
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