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.
A jury that heard three days of testimony in a contentious lawsuit where attorney Justin Pfeiffer was seeking $32,000 in back wages from his former firm, Berg & Androphy, unanimously decided after about an hour of deliberations Monday that no employment contract agreement existed between the parties. The lawsuit pitted Pfeiffer, now a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, against Houston trial lawyer David Berg.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a Texas software company is among those named in a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy among landlords to artificially inflate rental prices, the Fifth Circuit issues a rare precedential opinion in a venue dispute that pries a case away from U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, and that appellate court also found a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rule was “arbitrary and capricious.”
The Houston law firm of Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball teamed up with Philadelphia firm Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck to secure the massive award for client Francis “Ru” Amagasu, who was rendered quadriplegic following a rollover accident in 2017. The attorneys argued the seatbelt in Amagasu’s 1992 Mitsubishi 3000 GT, which was designed to allow four inches of slack in the event of a crash, actually caused his injuries by allowing his head to come into contact with the car’s roof, breaking his neck.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a jury sides with a Baylor graduate in a lawsuit over the alleged mishandling of her sexual assault complaints, a woman sexually assaulted by her masseuse has a $1.8 million punitive award wiped out on appeal, and a judge in Texas puts a nationwide halt to a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule that would require lenders collect certain data from small business borrowers.
Keresa Richardson has argued to the courts that the malapportionment of the 14 judicial districts in Texas is a “disease” and that the use of docket equalization measures to even the workload among the courts is a “field dressing.” Richardson is alleging both issues constitute violations of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
The subpoenaed criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor Richard Kuniansky, told The Lawbook the request from receiver Levi Benton, a former Harris County civil district judge, was “crazy,” and said if Benton is allowed access to the entire file it would have ramifications well beyond this case. The client, Ataa Shadi, was sued in civil court by duped investors who got a $3 million default judgment against him in 2020. He was indicted on related criminal fraud charges in May.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a massage company pays $1 million to end the sex assault claims lodged by two female customers, a lawsuit between the parent company of Ace Cash Express and a former business partner seeks as much as nine-figure damages, and American Airlines wins an appeal in a discrimination lawsuit venue fight.
A Harris County jury recently heard three weeks of evidence in a breach of contract and bad faith lawsuit stemming from the $90 million sale of a business that rents pumps used in the oil and gas industry. Jurors had to answer two questions: Did GR Energy Services breach a noncompete agreement by communicating with SpaceX about the possible purchase of pumps after it sold its Flex Flow pump business? And did Odessa Pumps act in bad faith in managing Flex Flow after the purchase from GR to keep profits artificially low in order to avoid paying GR a $30 million earnout? No, and no, the jury said.
The panel determined that because the actions of the McKinney police took to end the hostage situation and standoff were “objectively necessary,” Vicki Baker isn’t entitled to compensation on her Fifth Amendment takings claim. The Fifth Circuit said U.S. Supreme Court precedent, which has long recognized an exception to the takings clause, mandated the outcome and that, as a lower court, “it is not for us to decide that fairness and justice trump historical precedent.”
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.
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