Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A plain reading of the Texas Constitution’s requirement that taxes be “equal and uniform” should sound the death knell for the state’s revised franchise tax, a lawyer for food and beverage giant Nestle USA told the Texas Supreme Court. Not so fast, said the state’s lawyer. The Texas Legislature has authority to pick winners and losers by distinguishing among classifications of businesses.
The two privately held oil and gas exploration and production companies are working out a deal that involves selling natural oil and gas assets.
Justices ponder whether Austin TV reporter's focus on neurosurgeon's disciplinary case, malpractice suits led to defamatory broadcast.
Hired by rig owner Transocean just days after the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion, Rachel Giesber Clingman approached the case with her trademark relentless preparation. Her early work proved critical, as she faced a maze of complex litigation, Congressional hearings and the challenge of leading a team of independent trial lawyers. For Clingman, the case she is reluctant to discuss is the high point of a 20-year career, showcasing, and at times testing, the skills that have propelled her from a small Texas Hill Country town to her current position, at age 45, as the go-to defender of energy companies in trouble.
HOUSTON - Hired by rig owner Transocean just days after the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion, Rachel Giesber Clingman approached the case with her trademark relentless preparation. Her early work proved critical, as she faced a maze of complex litigation, Congressional hearings and the challenge of leading a team of independent trial lawyers. For Clingman, the case she is reluctant to discuss is the high point of a 20-year career, showcasing, and at times testing, the skills that have propelled her from a small Texas Hill Country town to her current position, at age 45, as the go-to defender of energy companies in trouble.
A demoted Parkland Memorial surgeon urged the justices to protect government employees who report wrongdoing through internal channels.
For a small oil and gas company like Dallas-based Longview Energy, the chance to obtain a lease in the red-hot Eagle Ford Shale was an opportunity that doesn’t come along every day. So it was a huge disappointment in 2010 when a promising lease of 46,000 acres was rejected by two of the company’s directors, representatives of The Huff Energy Fund, a New Jersey private equity company that owns 39 percent of Longview. What Longview did not know is that three days earlier, the very same land had been secured by a portfolio group that was 99 percent owned by the equity fund. Now, a South Texas judge has awarded Longview Energy the rights to the land valued at more than $500 million. It is one of the largest judgments ever involving the Eagle Ford play.
Latham partner Jeffrey Munoz represents Plains. Gardere partner Douglas Eyberg advises BP.
Private equity firms continue to invest big money in the oil patch, and that is good news for Texas energy lawyers.
The Texas Attorney General claims in court that the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 is outdated, unnecessary and an unconstitutional encroachment on the sovereignty of the state, but his legal efforts may have just assured the law's survival. Election law experts say that the VRA rose from near death – or at least irrelevance – last week when a federal court ruled that Texas legislators committed intentional racial discrimination when they drew new voting districts in 2011. "It is amazing that Texas officials intended to kill the Voting Rights Act, but because of the evidence of intentional discrimination, they may have just resurrected it," says University of Michigan law professor Ellen Katz, a nationally recognized election law expert.
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