Houston Appeals Court Declines to Revive Lawsuit Over O’Quinn’s Dead Body
After seven years, a legal fight over the disinterment of famed trial lawyer John O’Quinn’s body has been put to rest in Houston’s First Court of Appeals.
Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Natalie Posgate covers pro bono work, public service and diversity within the Texas legal community.
Natalie Posgate covers pro bono work, public service and diversity within the Texas legal community.
Natalie joined The Texas Lawbook in 2012 as a founding staff member shortly after receiving her Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Southern Methodist University. While at SMU, Natalie and SMU-classmate-turned-Lawbook-colleague Brooks Igo published “Sweeping Rape Under the Rug,” an award-winning investigative piece about SMU’s handling of on-campus sexual assaults. Later that year, Natalie and Brooks published a follow-up piece that broke the news of the first grand jury indictment in decades of an SMU student involving an alleged on-campus sexual assault. She began her reporting career in college as an intern for The Dallas Morning News’ breaking news desk, and before that, interned for Texas Highways magazine.
In the early days of The Lawbook, Natalie served as a general assignment reporter and covered everything from lawsuits to Texas law schools to mergers and acquisitions to legal industry trends. Before launching The Lawbook’s pro bono, public service and diversity beat, Natalie served as senior litigation writer. She has covered numerous high-profile trials gavel-to-gavel, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2013 insider trading case against Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban and a 2018 products liability trial that rendered a $242 million jury verdict against Toyota Motor Corp.
In 2021, Natalie profiled former East Texas federal prosecutor Joshua Russ, who went on the record for the first time with Posgate about resigning and filing a whistleblower complaint against the Department of Justice for its alleged political interference in a civil case Russ was leading against Walmart for its role in the opioid crisis. The piece is cited in a chapter of “Servants of the Damned,” a book released in September 2022 by New York Times journalist and bestselling author David Enrich.
Through The Lawbook’s content partnerships, Natalie’s work has regularly reappeared in the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Business Journal and The Dallas Morning News.
Natalie lives in East Dallas with her husband David and German Shorthaired Pointer rescue Stella. She is an avid runner, reader, hiker and coffee drinker.

After seven years, a legal fight over the disinterment of famed trial lawyer John O’Quinn’s body has been put to rest in Houston’s First Court of Appeals.
Yetter Coleman is the latest Texas law firm to join the associate salary hike launched last month by Davis Polk.
Kelly Rentzel, former general counsel at Texas Capital, has a new job: general counsel of First Foundation Inc. The emerging California-founded financial services firm is moving to Dallas, and they've tagged Rentzel to help them grow. Natalie Posgate reports.
A long-simmering dispute between Talisman Energy and 2,700 royalty owners has nearly ended with the distribution approval last week of a $24 million settlement by a federal judge in Houston. Litigation writer Natalie Posgate has details of the deal and the names of the lawyers involved.
Four litigation boutiques — three based in Houston and one based in Austin — are the latest firms to match the Davis Polk associate pay scale for first-years.
Patent trial lawyer Ted Stevenson, who has secured nine-digit jury verdicts, joined Alston & Bird this week.
The move signifies Kirkland’s ramped up effort to grow its operations in Texas with practice areas beyond corporate M&A.
A closely-watched trial among healthcare insurers concluded Thursday with a $19.1 million verdict awarded to two emergency medicine group practices affiliated with TeamHealth. But lawyers for the defendant, Molina Healthcare of Texas, said the verdict will be significantly reduced and the new figure falls closely in line with what their client was willing to reimburse.
U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, who has the busiest patent docket in the country, issued two amended standing orders this week designed to keep court matters moving as efficiently as possible while maintaining fairness to both. The orders appear to be well-received so far by practitioners.
A three-judge panel in the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas Thursday affirmed a $213 million trial court judgment against Toyota Motor Corp. The case revolved around a rear-end collision in 2016 that left two children severely brain-damaged. A Dallas jury concluded in 2018 that the injuries were exacerbated by a defective seatback design in the family's 2002 Lexus. The Lawbook's Natalie Posgate has details of the court's 2-1 decision.
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