Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Highland Capital Management General Counsel Scott Ellington said he is “pleased” with the settlement that was signed yesterday afternoon between the Dallas hedge fund’s Cornerstone Healthcare Group, private equity firm Nautic Partners, and a consortium of defendants the Texas hospital chain has spent the last nine weeks in trial against.
Two Midland-based oil companies and Dallas-based J. Cleo Thompson intentionally failed to meet their end of a decade-old agreement with Dallas oil mogul T. Boone Pickens to acquire and drill more than 160 oil wells in Reeves and Pecos counties, a West Texas jury ruled Wednesday.
T. Boone Pickens is 88-years-old. His hearing and vision are poor. He tires quickly. The oil and gas mogul admits he’s made billions of dollars and lost billions of dollars. But seated in a witness chair in a West Texas courtroom for two days last week, Pickens said several hundred million of those dollars he lost were actually stolen from him and he wants it back.
Lawyers for oil mogul T. Boone Pickens told jurors Friday during opening statements that the billionaire “may give money to charity, but he’s not going to let you cheat him out of his rights.” The trial pits Pickens against another legendary name in oil, J. Cleo Thompson, as well as three Midland exploration & production companies. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. Defense lawyers countered that Pickens’ case is not supported by the evidence and asked jurors to “clear the good names” of their clients.
Coppell Independent School District’s election system discriminates against the area’s largest ethnic group by preventing proper representation on the school board, a lawsuit filed Thursday in Dallas federal court alleges.
A consortium of more than 55 Texas and national business groups have filed a federal lawsuit in East Texas against the U.S. Department of Labor in an attempt to overthrow the government’s new overtime rule that would make more than 4 million American workers eligible for overtime pay.
A federal appeals court has tossed out an appeal filed by football fans affected by the 2011 Super Bowl seating fiasco in Dallas who were unsatisfied with essentially every outcome of their lawsuit against the National Football League that went to trial last spring.
A Dallas jury unanimously awarded $19.7 million to the family of a deceased hospital worker who was left brain-dead under her doctor’s care while undergoing treatment for a rare nervous system condition.
In a unanimous ruling, the Texas Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the core of the Texas Highway Beautification Act, which regulates highway signs and billboards, is unconstitutional because it is content-based by cracking down on various billboards and signs differently based on their message. It is a slam-dunk win for Houston attorney Meredith Parenti and her client, who displayed a Ron Paul sign in front of his Highway 71 store only to get sued by the state for doing so.
A team of Locke Lord attorneys said Tuesday that they secured a $35.9 million judgment for a Houston company that claimed losing out on millions for a construction project it worked on for a year and half longer than originally contracted but the general contractor refused to pay.
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