Q&A: Patrick Tagtow, BMC Software
For Premium Subscribers BMC Software GC Pat Tagtow and his senior counsel, Sarah Menendez, spent five years litigating and two weeks at trial claiming that competitor but sometimes business partner
BMC Legal Team Needed ‘Sheer Tenacity, Strategy and Endurance’ to Win $1.6B Award
BMC Software GC Pat Tagtow and his senior counsel, Sarah Menendez, spent five years litigating and two weeks at trial claiming that competitor but sometimes business partner IBM made a “material misrepresentation” and acted in “bad faith” during contract negotiations when it agreed to not displace BMC’s products from AT&T’s mainframe systems but did so anyway. There were 52 depositions, 17 expert reports, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents produced as evidence and more than 950 court docket entries.
But last Memorial Day, Tagtow, Menendez and lead trial lawyer Sean Gorman spent all day checking phone messages and emails every 30 minutes and refreshing PACER to see if the judge had issued his verdict. A billion dollars was at stake. Finally, just as the Menendezes sat down to a dinner of buttermilk brined baked chicken, biscuits and slaw, the decision arrived. This is the story behind the three people who led the litigation and why it is a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
Sen. Schumer Asks NDTX Chief Judge to Revise Case Assignment Methods
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer sent the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas a letter Thursday asking that he “reform the method of assigning cases” to judges to put an end to forum shopping by litigants. The senator said litigants — especially the Texas Attorney General — have abused NDTX procedures that automatically assign cases to judges who sit in those geographic divisions, including divisions that have only one or two federal judges, in order to “hand-pick individual district judges seen as particularly sympathetic to their claims.”
New SEC Regional Director Eric Werner: ‘My Job is to Protect Investors’
Tuesday was Eric Werner’s second day as the new regional director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth Office, and he already had hundreds of new emails to answer. In an exclusive interview with The Texas Lawbook, Werner discussed caseloads, resources and staffing, and the SEC's lack of a Houston office.
Raymond Chang ‘Takes Extreme Ownership of Everything’ at DNOW
DistributionNOW GC Raymond Chang and his colleagues noticed a wave of sudden worker departures at its Odessa Pumps business. A speedy internal investigation was followed by a quick lawsuit in which the global supplier of oil and gas drilling equipment and parts accused an Odessa businessman and other former workers of stealing confidential information and trade secrets. The case went to trial five months later ending with a jury unanimously finding in DNOW's favor and awarding $9 million in damages. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Chang as the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department. This is his story.
Q&A: Raymond Chang
For Premium Subscribers: When Raymond Chang noticed in the spring 2022 that a wave of key workers at DistributionNOW were leaving in a “coordinated mass exodus,” he felt the need to investigate. That investigation revealed that the employees, including a senior executive, were planning to create a competitive venture using stolen company property. The result was a lawsuit that resulted in a $9 million jury verdict. . Lawbook founder Mark Curriden asked Chang, has been named 2022 ACC General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department, about his experience, what he looks for in outside counsel and his other successes at DistributionNOW.
Premium Q&A: Dionne Hamilton, GC, Honeywell Smart Energy and Thermal Solutions
Dionne Hamilton is general counsel at Honeywell Smart Energy and Thermal Solutions, a unit of the global conglomerate Honeywell International. She advises senior corporate leadership on all legal issues, new regulatory activities and geopolitical subjects that impact operations, works on M&A and joint ventures and manages all aspects of the legal budget. Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook, had a recent chance to discuss that experience with Hamilton.
SEC Names New Top Cop for Financial Institutions, Publicly Traded Businesses in Texas Region
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has promoted Fort Worth Regional Office Associate Regional Director of Enforcement Eric R. Werner to the region’s top position – regional director. The SEC’s decision to make Werner its top corporate cop in the region is garnering praise from lawyers who know him.
Honeywell’s Dionne Hamilton: ‘’Pragmatic Leader with an Uncanny Ability to Demand Respect’
Honeywell Smart Energy GC Dionne Hamilton has scored several successes during her 30 months on the job, including leading the legal department’s role in the company’s launch of revolutionary gas meter technology that monitors residential and commercial activities in real time and stops incidents before they occur. She advises senior corporate leadership on all legal issues, new regulatory activities and geopolitical subjects that impact operations, works on M&A and joint ventures and manages all aspects of the legal budget. Hamilton is also national leader on DEI. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named the UT Law graduate a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department.
Bill Moss is Talos Energy’s ‘Quarterback’
For nearly all of 2022 and the first few months of 2023, Talos Energy GC Bill Moss guided the Houston company through the negotiations and highly complex $1.1 billion acquisition of EnVen, a fellow deep-water operator in the Gulf of Mexico. “It was a difficult deal to get done,” said Moss, who has corporate law in his DNA. Citing the complexity of the deal, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook named the Talos acquisition, led by Moss and Vinson & Elkins as outside counsel, as a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for M&A Transaction of the Year. This article looks at the Talos acquisition and the GC behind it.