Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Conferences, real estate investments and stock in ExxonMobil are among the financial interests the Texas Supreme Court justices’ financial disclosure forms detail for the past year. The Texas Lawbook made an open records request for the forms of the nine sitting justices in May. Four of the justices requested extensions. The Lawbook obtained the rest of the forms in July.
Ruby Kless Sondock, the first woman to serve on the Texas Supreme Court in a regular session and Harris County’s first female district judge, died last week at age 100. Sondock, a 1961 graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, leaves an enduring impact on the legal profession, particularly by advancing opportunities for women in the law, the school said.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith recently authored a dissent arguing his colleagues are spending the court's en banc bandwidth on the wrong case.
In its request for a stay or a continuance, 3M argued nine weeks between trials wasn’t enough time to prepare, that its lead attorney had timely filed a vacation letter that, under local rules, should have protected her from the July 13 trial setting, and that it only learned the identities of 20 of the 30 plaintiffs in the case on March 27.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2025 docket delivered a substantial course correction for the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, with the high court reversing or vacating its rulings more often than not.
The Texas Lawbook looks at Fifth Circuit decisions recently reviewed by the Supreme Court, including summaries for the high court’s merits docket, its emergency docket and its grant-vacate-remand orders.
Reinforcing a ruling from the Dallas court of appeals, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday determined that a grocer’s failure to investigate its suspicions that a landlord had leased its property to a competitor means it must forfeit a $20.8 million jury award.
In a major legal victory Wednesday for leaders of Gateway Church, a federal judge in Sherman dismissed a lawsuit brought by members of the church who claim its leaders misused hundreds of thousands of dollars of their tithes.
For more than five decades, Douglas Lang has been a staple of the Texas appellate law community, including 16 years as a justice on the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas. Last week, Lang joined Dallas-based Carrington Coleman as senior counsel after more than four years at Thompson Coburn.
An error in the jury charge means Union Pacific Railroad Company will be getting a new trial in a lawsuit brought by a woman who drunkenly fell asleep on the tracks in a seated position and sued the company for her injuries.
In its recent decision in K&K Inez Properties v. Kolle, Texas Supreme Court clarifies the required showing for a “responsible third party” designation. This article examines the holding and its implications for practitioners.
Careful AI use enhances both written and oral advocacy while creating opportunities for meaningful, impressive efficiency gains. The technology was breathtaking when I ran my first AI query and has rapidly improved since. Here are some practical lessons I have learned that are aimed at appellate practitioners but applicable to any litigation practice.
In this edition of Asked & Answered, Third Court of Appeals Justice Rosa Lopez Theofanis shares how she sees AI impacting the appellate process and dishes on what lawyers practicing before her shouldn’t do. Justice Theofanis, who is the first sitting judge to participate in Asked & Answered, joined the all-female panel in January 2023.
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