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.
U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright presided over the trial that began with jury selection Feb. 15. Testimony began Feb. 20 and the jury returned its verdict Monday, determining Google had infringed five patents held by communications company Flyp with its Google Voice internet phone service.
A three-justice panel of the Fourteenth Court of Appeals issued an opinion reviving the lawsuit brought by the family of Carolyn Burford against her husband’s former employer, Alcoa Inc., over her allegedly fatal exposure to asbestos. At a hearing before dismissing the case, Judge Mark Davidson, who presides over the asbestos multidistrict litigation court in Harris County, had said he was “reluctantly” granting Alcoa’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment and hoped his ruling would be reversed on appeal.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a few recent rulings from the Texas Supreme Court are highlighted, a San Antonio attorney charged with defrauding clients out of as much as $65 million over 20 years goes to prison, and cryptocurrency miners sue the Department of Energy over an effort to get data on energy use.
The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday entered a stay for the second time in a case that involves the intersection of rules governing civil discovery and federal laws regarding the dissemination of child pornography. In January, the court lifted its first stay in the case and in a 5-4 decision denied Magdoline Elhindi’s petition for writ of mandamus. Tuesday’s stay came amid consideration of Elhindi’s motion for rehearing, which remains pending.
The jury that was selected last Monday and began deliberating that Friday took about two and a half hours to side with construction staffing company Harris Ventures, which does business as Staff Zone, in its dispute with landlord JM-RB Properties. The panel’s 10-2 decision awarded Staff Zone about $1.3 million in lost profits incurred when it was “constructively evicted” from the building it leased in Plano, plus $450,000 in attorney fees and about $150,000 to cover expert witness costs.
In this edition of litigation roundup, the Fifth Circuit has asked the Texas Supreme Court to answer a certified question in a dispute that pits a nonprofit group against the state’s environmental protection agency, the Texas Supreme Court grants review in two tax appraisal cases involving the value of Oncor’s transmission lines and the founder of a Call of Duty esports team take aim at Activision Blizzard’s business practices in a new suit.
A Dallas jury heard eight days of testimony and deliberated for two hours before deciding the owner of roughly 150 Popeyes restaurants, Guillermo Perales and his company Sun Holdings, owed former employee Jerry “Scott” Stockton about $15.6 million in compensatory damages and $15.1 million in punitive damages for failing to follow through on a promise to compensate him with 5 percent of the annual operating profits of the restaurants. Sun Holdings is the second largest franchisee organization in the country, with about 1,800 restaurants in its portfolio.
During oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the configuration of Texas’ intermediate appellate court districts, the panel was asked to halt the March 5 primary election for the intermediate courts of appeals. The lawsuit brought by Keresa Richardson seeks to have the courts redraw the districts to address malapportionment. Richardson previously sought to have all members of the Dallas appellate court recuse themselves (two obliged) from hearing the case arguing they all have a conflict of interest “derived from the fact that this case will affect their elected status, their voting districts, and their future elected status, and thus they are all personally interested in the relief being requested and should not be the arbiters of the issues.”
Aspire Power Ventures filed a direct appeal with the Third Court of Appeals in Austin on Tuesday, challenging three orders issued by the Public Utility Commission of Texas that created and modified a program to provide reserve power in emergency situations. While the stated goal of the ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service is to prevent grid issues like what the state experienced during Winter Storm Uri, Aspire alleges it instead “does nothing to increase actual electricity reserve capacity — in fact, it actually decreases capacity when it is most needed.”
A jury heard eight days of testimony and deliberated for less than two hours before unanimously siding with Daniel Moos on his breach of contract claims. The jury rejected Pillar Income Asset Management’s counterclaims that Moss had breached his fiduciary duty to the company.
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