Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
When we turned the page on 2020, the promise was to get 2020 behind us, if nothing else. For trial lawyers that meant getting back to the courtroom. Not all did, but the significant cases and significant verdicts involving Texas lawyers showed a promising horizon: Not so cloudy, even perhaps for the lawyer starting his case by pleading he was not a cat.
A Delaware chancery judge Wednesday ordered Dallas-based Energy Transfer to pay Tulsa-based The Williams Companies a $410 million breakup fee for the megamerger between the two companies that Energy Transfer called off in 2016 after market conditions in the energy industry became abysmal. The decision follows a six-day trial in May in Delaware that The Texas Lawbook covered in-depth.
A three-judge panel Wednesday unanimously affirmed an EDTX decision dismissing a case brought by Walmart challenging a federal investigation into widespread irregularities in the distribution of opioids through Walmart pharmacies in Texas and other states. Litigation writer Natalie Posgate has details.
Just weeks after a Harris County jury held Hilton 90% liable in the sexual assault of a Cleveland woman, the hotel chain settled with the victim for an undisclosed sum. By settling, experts say, Hilton is hoping the horrific details presented in court will "quietly go away."
A federal appeals court Wednesday held that the Richardson-based property management-software company, a recent victim of a phishing expedition, cannot recover $6 million in stolen funds from its insurer, which affirmed a lower-court ruling that reached the same conclusion.
The plaintiff, who was injured in 2016 while putting a bariatric patient into a wheelchair, was represented by a team of lawyers at Houston firm Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner.
Toyota Motor Corp has reached a settlement in a case on appeal in which a Dallas family obtained a $213 million judgment in a car crash case, according to a joint motion the parties filed with the Supreme Court of Texas on Wednesday. The settlement agreement follows the preservation of the nine-figure judgment this summer in Dallas’ Fifth Court of Appeals and a 2018 jury trial that rendered a $242 million verdict for Benjamin and Kristi Reavis and their two young children, Emily and Owen, who suffered permanent brain damage after a 2016 rear-end crash in the family’s Lexus ES 300.
A Vegas jury returned a roughly $3 million verdict on Monday in the first trial involving emergency room doctor reimbursement from employer-sponsored health insurance. But TeamHealth's AZA lawyers from Houston expect millions more could be awarded when they meet the defense team for UnitedHealthcare back in court next week for the punitive damages phase of the trial. Natalie Posgate details the case and how TeamHealth’s lawyers won the first phase of the trial.
A Las Vegas jury began deliberating Wednesday morning over whether to order UnitedHealthcare to pay a physician staffing firm millions. The impending verdict will decide the fate of the first case to go to trial involving the compensation of emergency room doctors through commercial health insurance plans provided by employers.
A Harris County jury has returned a $44 million verdict in connection with a woman's allegation that she was assaulted at a Houston hotel during a business conference in 2017. The Nov. 18 verdict allocated 10% of the damages against the man she accused of assaulting her and 90% against Hilton Management for having failed to protect her when summoned to the scene. Litigation writer Natalie Posgate has the names of the lawyers involved.
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