Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Allied Aviation and Ulysses Cruz filed a brief this week with the First Court of Appeals in Houston explaining they are close to finalizing a mediated settlement in the personal injury lawsuit and seeking an abatement of the appeal.
The Fifth Circuit and Texas Supreme Court.issued important precedents in 2022. The Fifth Circuit clarified the standard for a conditional-refusal-to-deal theory under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, established that arbitration rules incorporated into an arbitration agreement control the question of whether arbitration happened and sent a clear signal that the Seventh Amendment attaches to traditionally common-law prosecutions. The Texas Supreme Court provided guidance on the scope of a waiver of claims in a settlement agreement, clarified substantial compliance with contractual notice provisions, rejected informal fiduciary duties to an individual shareholder in a closely held corporation and narrowed the availability of consequential damages. This article examines those and other rulings of significance by the appellate courts.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a team from Susman Godfrey secures a $166 million patent win against AT&T and Nokia, the Texas Supreme Court sides with insurance companies in a dispute brought by emergency room doctors over out-of-network reimbursement payments and the Fifth Circuit chides an attorney’s litigation tactic.
A nonprofit news organization seeks documents uncovered during a consulting firm’s investigation into allegations of favoritism in admissions to the University of Texas. Although the report was made public, UT says the underlying documents fall under attorney-client privilege.
If the Texas Legislature wanted the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to be immune from civil lawsuits, it would have passed laws stating so, lawyers representing two large energy companies told the Texas Supreme Court during oral arguments Monday. The justices clearly understood the full stakes of the decision before them. “Are you arguing that ERCOT is too big to fail?” Justice Boyd asked. “In essence, yes,” former Texas Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, representing ERCOT, answered.
In the first edition of Litigation Roundup in 2023, the City of Dallas has to pay up in a real estate dispute, Exxon Mobil sets its sights on undoing a “windfall tax” the European Union has imposed on energy companies and the Fifth Circuit revives an excessive force case against a cop who punched a man at Hobby Airport.
Just Energy, a Canadian-owned power retailer operating in Texas, must go through state administrative proceedings and state court in Travis County – not federal bankruptcy court – to challenge the record-high rates that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas charged power companies during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Thursday.
If a trucking company gets its way at the Texas Supreme Court, the grief of rich plaintiffs will be worth more in wrongful death damages than the grief of poorer plaintiffs, numerous law professors and a trial attorney interest group argue.
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