Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
During oral arguments, much of the court’s questioning centered around whether Texas had proven scienter, or that Dr. Richard Malouf knew he was violating the statute when he submitted 1,842 claims for reimbursement, which is required for the judgment against Malouf to stand. But that was not the issue that carried the day for Malouf.
Paul, who argues that what happened to him in this case is “a stunning episode of Wild West justice,” filed his petition on June 13. The Mitte Foundation, which alleges Paul’s petition contains “many factual misstatements,” has until July 18 to file a response. The petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to answer two questions: 1. Whether a criminal-contempt prosecution by an interested private party violates the Due Process Clause. 2. Whether sentencing a criminal defendant to jail via email, in absentia and without the opportunity to address the judge, violates the Due Process Clause or the Sixth Amendment.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we detail two new changes in rules governing attorneys who practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a jury in Harris County issues a $17 million verdict in a seven-year-old lawsuit and Whataburger goes to court to defend its trademark.
Rounding out appointments to the newly created business courts, Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Friday Sofia Androgué and Grant Dorfman will be the inaugural appointees to the Houston division.
Legal efforts by some of the largest energy companies in Texas to force the Texas Public Utility Commission to reprice the record-high electricity rates it charged during Winter Storm Uri three years ago were flatly rejected Friday by a unanimous Texas Supreme Court. The state’s highest court ruled that the PUC did not exceed its legal authority in February 2021 when it ignored market competition to set electric rates at $9,000 per megawatt-hour because the Texas grid faced an emergency crisis and possible collapse “that would have plunged the state into darkness for weeks, maybe months.”
The unanimous 30-page opinion reverses the decision of the Austin court of appeals in 2023 that the PUC overstepped its legal authority by ignoring integrated market competitive procedures and instead manually set electric rates during the four days of Winter Storm Uri.
Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, writing for the unanimous court, explained that when the royalty provisions are read “together, not separately” and are considered in the context of the parties’ agreement, they are not ambiguous. But the ruling that sided with the University of Texas System Board of Regents did not give the university an outright win.
Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed two judges each to the new business courts in San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, leaving only the division in Houston without inaugural appointees.
The governor made appointments to the San Antonio court Thursday, while on Wednesday he appointed the judges in Dallas and Fort Worth and on Tuesday he appointed jurists to the newly-created Fifteenth Court of Appeals as well as the Austin division of the business courts.
Two others with intermediate appellate court experience were named to the appellate court by Gov. Abbott, who also announced appointments to the new Austin business court division. The governor still must name judges for business court divisions in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio. The Texas Lawbook's Janet Elliott has the details.
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