Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a Texas federal judge threatens to toss a minority investor suit against Blackstone Inc., a Houston boutique notches a PTAB win against Apple, and the Texas Supreme Court agrees to hear a suit stemming from the handling of a fen-phen settlement.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that a federal judge in Houston correctly rejected Ramey LLP's claims against Amegy Bank’s parent company, Zions Bancorporation, regarding the bank’s decision to freeze and seize $249,300 related to Ramey’s forgivable loan request under the Paycheck Protection Program.
Who is representing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in all of his various legal battles? The make-up of his defense teams have varied case-to-case, but some attorneys have been retained in almost all of the lawsuits Paxton faces. The Lawbook breaks it down.
At an Austin news conference, lawyers Tony Buzbee and Dan Cogdell promise a protracted fight to acquit the beleaguered attorney general. They also poked fun at the lead impeachment prosecutors, Rusty Hardin and Dick DeGuerin, saying the pair were introduced earlier by the Texas House “like they were the homecoming king and queen.”
Lawmakers upended the state’s system of elected district court judges and regional intermediate appellate courts as business interests won a new court system for complex business disputes. The 2023 legislature rejected efforts to cut local governments out of public nuisance suits and weaken the state’s anti-SLAPP statute.
Six amicus briefs have been filed with the Fifth Circuit in the case where IBM is trying to undo a $1.6 billion judgment entered against it after a bench trial before U.S. District Judge Gray Miller. BMC had filed a cross appeal in the lawsuit but dropped that fight in April to “simplify and shorten the proceedings.”
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit has asked the state’s high court to answer two certified questions that will determine if two flight attendants, Marvin Sanders and Matthew Sodrok, can proceed with their suit against Boeing over the alleged malfunction of a smoke detector on one of the company’s planes.
In an “exceedingly rare” move, as a dissenting justice noted, the case was not first decided by a three-justice panel before the en banc court considered it. The court’s May 18 divided decision generated two dissents and likely set the stage for an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court.
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