Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz returns to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday as a party -- not as a practitioner -- to argue federal campaign-finance limits violate his First Amendment rights. At issue: a 20-year-old federal law that prohibits candidates from raising more than $250,000 after an election to repay a personal loan to their campaigns.
Although the case "facts were difficult," the Fifth Circuit vacated a tax evasion conviction of Houston lawyer Jack Stephen Pursley on a simple premise: a statute of limitations defense that the three-judge panel said was erroneously shot down by the trial court without analysis.
Judge Gregg Costa, one of the few moderate to left leaning jurists on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told The Texas Lawbook Thursday that he is resigning his position on the 17-member appellate court to go back to practice law. Costa, who is only 49, informed his judicial colleagues, law clerks and President Joe Biden this week that he plans to leave the bench in early August. In an interview with The Lawbook, Costa said it “has been a true honor” to serve on the New Orleans-headquartered appeals court and that it was “a difficult decision” to resign. “I look forward to returning to my passion and getting back into the arena of trying cases,” Costa said. The Texas Lawbook has the inside details.
For a decade, HP battled a Taiwanese-based CD-ROM maker in courts from Texas to California over allegations of price fixing. HP senior counsel Brad Hartz and his team worked several thousand hours on objections, motions to dismiss, depositions and intense fights over discovery. HP's outside counsel, Beck Redden, worked another 5,000 hours. It all paid off on June 5, 2020, when a federal appeals court handed Hartz and Beck Redden a $438 million victory. This is the behind the scenes story of one of the biggest judgments upheld by the Fifth Circuit in a decade and the 2021 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
Photo (credit Dylan Aguilar): Brad Hartz (center right) with attorneys from Beck Redden
Scott Keller, the former Texas solicitor general and a new kid among private practitioners on the appellate block in Washington, will be first up before the U.S. Supreme Court in the new year when he urges the court to halt the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for companies with 100 or more employees. The argument, tomorrow, is a rare Friday session for the Supreme Court.
Austin attorney Sarah Weddington's death Sunday left a legion of colleagues and admirers following her abortion-rights legacy from her world-shaking win in Roe v. Wade.
A three-judge panel Wednesday unanimously affirmed an EDTX decision dismissing a case brought by Walmart challenging a federal investigation into widespread irregularities in the distribution of opioids through Walmart pharmacies in Texas and other states. Litigation writer Natalie Posgate has details.
A federal appeals court Wednesday held that the Richardson-based property management-software company, a recent victim of a phishing expedition, cannot recover $6 million in stolen funds from its insurer, which affirmed a lower-court ruling that reached the same conclusion.
A state appellate court rejected San Antonio’s claim of exorbitant pricing by ERCOT during Winter Storm Uri, but did not address the key question of whether the operator of the Texas power grid has sovereign immunity from lawsuits.
In a rare move, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed this week to take a Texas sovereign-immunity case that originated from one of the state appellate courts rather than from the Texas Supreme Court.
With the move, Douglas Lang will co-chair the St. Louis-based firm's national appellate practice.
As lawyers who oppose mandatory membership in the Texas State Bar ask the U.S. Supreme Court for review of a Fifth Circuit decision, the trial judge in the case has issued a final judgment that may allow the bar to proceed with its plans to comply with the circuit’s holding.
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