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, Texas juries find infringement in one case involving smart thermostats and another involving cloud storage, a group of doctors want a Harris County judge to confirm a $153.5 million arbitration award in a dispute with UnitedHealthcare and federal prosecutors in Houston drop a female genital mutilation case.
A three-judge panel on Friday determined that disputed fact issues should have precluded U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor from granting Mesa Airlines a summary judgment win in the lawsuit brought by Issam Abdallah and Abderraouf Alkhawaldeh. The men booked their tickets through American Airlines for a flight Mesa operated. Both frequent fliers on American Airlines, Abdallah holds gold status and Alkhawaldeh holds executive platinum status.
Owners of Dallas properties available for rent on platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO have lodged a suit seeking to stop enforcement of a city ordinance that would largely ban short-term rentals in the city. It’s the latest in a long line of lawsuits challenging the ability of cities to regulate the short-term rental market, an issue the Texas Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin sees his retaliation lawsuit revived while a finance professor at the university sees his discrimination lawsuit tossed, a judge in the valley awards a man who had his leg amputated in a workplace injury $10.5 million, and a team of lawyers at Foley & Lardner get a win for their direct-selling client against the Federal Trade Commission.
The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday morning on a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a dispute that tees up the interpretation of a 2017 amendment to the Texas Prompt Payment of Claims Act. Noting a federal court split on the issue and that only one intermediate appellate court in Texas has addressed the issue, the Fifth Circuit asked: In an action under Chapter 542A of the act, does an insurer’s payment of the full appraisal award plus any possible statutory interest preclude recovery of attorney fees?
According to a time-stamped copy of a letter Harris County District Judge Ursula Hall sent to the First Court of Appeals Monday, she avoided by one hour and 44 minutes what the justices had threatened would be the “immediate initiation” of contempt proceedings for her lengthy delay in ruling on two pending motions in a foreclosure dispute. When the court issued a writ of mandamus to Judge Hall Sept. 25, she had failed to rule on a motion for summary judgment for three years, five months and 18 days.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Ken Paxton returns to office and sues Yelp over disclaimers the company affixed to listings for “pregnancy resource centers,” the SEC accuses an Austin oil and gas promotor of defrauding investors out of $5 million and Dallas law firm Caldwell Cassady & Curry is tapped to bring a trade secrets lawsuit for a financial technology client in Chicago.
Harris County Judge Ursula Hall has until 5 p.m. Monday to rule on a motion that has been pending before her in a foreclosure dispute for three years and five months or the First Court of Appeals has said it will initiate contempt proceedings.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the former general counsel of the Houston Housing Authority has her qui tam False Claims Act suit partially revived by the Fifth Circuit, an allegedly undisclosed personal relationship between a magistrate judge and a plaintiff attorney who secured a $124.5 million award in her court gets a second look, and a former CEO of a software company loses his bid to keep a $20 million suit in Texas courts.
Harris County District Judge Elaine Palmer has ordered attorneys Michael D. Sydow and Chidi D. Anunobi to take 10 hours of legal ethics education classes each year for the next five years after finding they filed for a lawsuit for an improper purpose on behalf of their litigation management company client, Iron Oak. The lawsuit was brought in an attempt to collect $10 million from inventors Michael E. Porter and John T. Preston and their company Continuum Energy Technologies.
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