Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Irma Jean Carillo was 15 and a sophomore in high school in rural West Texas when she started thinking about becoming a lawyer. “I refused to take home economics. I took speech and debate instead,” she told the Dallas Bar Association in 2022. “The idea of extemporaneously speaking and debating and getting to argue with the teacher was so much fun. Doing the research and making sure that we prepared the arguments. It was so much fun.” Four decades later, Irma Carillo Ramirez is a U.S. magistrate in Dallas and likely to soon be the first Hispanic woman to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
A former federal prosecutor in Dallas, Judge Ramirez has served as a federal magistrate in the Northern District of Texas since 2002. In 2016, she was nominated to a NDTX judgeship with the support of both Texas senators, but never received a vote by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn, who served as chief judge of the Northern District of Texas from 2016 to 2022, has informed President Joe Biden that she is taking senior status effective May 15.
Judge Lynn, who was nominated to the federal bench in 1999 by President Clinton and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on a voice vote, told The Texas Lawbook that she has no plans to reduce her caseload but is “simply making room for another appointment for our court.”
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