Famed ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s sued Conopco, a subsidiary of parent company Unilever, in Manhattan federal court Tuesday morning alleging a deal Unilever struck regarding sale of the company’s ice cream in the West Bank violates their 2000 merger agreement. The lawsuit, filed by AZA, presents a conflict between the prerogative of Ben & Jerry’s independent board to make decisions about its social missions and its parent company’s authority over finances and operations.
McDermott Opens in Austin
Chicago firm McDermott, Will & Emery has opened an Austin office with the hiring of eight intellectual property partners from Baker Botts. It’s the firm’s third office in Texas and 22nd worldwide.
Litigation Roundup: Pizza Hut Franchise Win, Charter Punis Phase Delayed, More Social Media Addiction
A juror gets Covid, delaying the punitive damages phase of a wrongful death trial that has already rendered a $375 million actual damages verdict. A denied PPP loan turns into litigation. Alleged gossip at a La Madeleine results in a pro se lawsuit. Elon Musk gets sued again. And more.
Three TX Legal Aid Providers Receive $2.5M for Natural Disaster Aid
Three Texas legal aid providers located in North Texas, the Houston area and South Texas, are receiving $2.5 million from a Congress-founded nonprofit to assist in their efforts to represent low-income Texans impacted by Winter Storm Uri and other natural disasters. The money will go toward expanding resources and reimbursement for legal services already provided.
Litigation Roundup: Double Legal Trouble for Elon Musk, TX Billionaire Spared in SPAC Suit, Revenge Porn Ruling
In this week’s roundup, we have two new lawsuits, a venue change, a new SEC enforcement action, a ruling denying a request for a new trial, a revenge porn final judgment, a loss for Ken Paxton and a tentative dismissal of an investor lawsuit involving Tilman Fertitta.
Litigation Roundup: Stanford Trial Date, Social Media Addiction, Jerry Jones’ Daddy Issues
A challenge to a high-profile patent that endangers a multibillion-dollar verdict. An SEC settlement worth hundreds-of-millions involving a Texas-based financial services giant. An Texas-based airline sued for a passenger’s wrongful arrest. All this and more in this week’s litigation roundup.
Corban Addison’s Wastelands Gives Scoop Behind Pork Producer Nuisance Trials
A new legal thriller out this month details the story of some Texas plaintiff’s lawyers who took on the pork industry’s most powerful player, a formidable opponent that provoked death threats, had the legal team followed and even changed some laws in the middle of the five-year nuisance litigation that resulted in five jury verdicts totaling hundreds-of-millions. The Lawbook sat down with Wastelands author Corban Addison Thursday when his book tour brought him to Dallas.
Litigation Roundup: A Trial, An Italian Food Fight, An Indecent Job-Seeker
After years of operating the Corporate Deal Tracker Weekly Roundup, it dawned on The Lawbook staff that we should run something similar on the litigation end.
The idea budded out of a need to keep track of more litigation than our small staff is able to in the context of substantive, standalone articles. That way we can help you (and ourselves) keep abreast of even more of the Texas-sized quantity of lawsuits, trials, settlements, or other notable developments that fill business litigation dockets daily across the state.
We’re yet to develop any formal rules or structure to it, so in the meantime, we’re giving the first roundup a go with a handful of matters that have caught our eye in the last week.
If you have any matters that you think are worthy of a mention in a future roundup, please email your submission here: tlblitigation@texaslawbook.net
Judge Finds IBM Committed Fraud, Awards BMC $1.6B
A Houston federal judge on Monday found IBM committed fraud against Houston-based BMC Software in a dispute involving IBM’s removal of BMC’s mainframe products from their largest mutual client, AT&T, during an outsourcing project several years ago. The price tag? More than $1.6 billion, including a $717 million punitive damages figure that BMC never specified during trial.
Phillips 66 Sued for Trade Secret Misappropriation
A lawsuit now made public pits Phillips 66 and Propel Fuels against one another and involves claims that P66 misappropriated Propel’s trade secrets after a deal fell through.