Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A Houston appellate court has reversed a 2019 jury verdict that awarded European cosmetics distributor Benelux Cosmetics $2.7 million against Houston-based gel nail polish manufacturer GHP Nail Systems and its parent company. The decision by the Fourteenth Court of Appeals is a win for a group lawyers at Hicks Thomas and Wright Close Barger.
The high court's decision in the long-running Terence Andrus v. Texas capital-murder case was a surprise for Andrus’s lawyers who worked hard to convince courts that Andrus was beset by egregious ineffective assistance of counsel at his earliest trials.
The Texas Supreme Court determines hemp dealers have no constitutional right to manufacture hemp to smoke.
The Texas Supreme Court held that the two companies seeking to take private property for the controversial Dallas-to-Houston high-speed rail have a statutory right to exercise eminent domain to take right-of-way for the 240-mile rail line.
Two grants, consolidated for argument, raise facts and issues that will capture headlines, but both raise questions under the citizens participation act, the pervasive interlocutory scheme intended to provide a quick dismissal ramp for claims based on free-speech issues. Both cases focus on efforts to create anti-abortion “sanctuary” cities throughout Texas. And both involve an ordinance, the first of several, declaring Waskom to be a sanctuary city. But the proponents didn’t stop there.
The court answered certified questions from the Fifth Circuit asking it to interpret state liquor laws banning public corporations from owning package-store permits in Texas. But, in doing so, justices determine an exempt corporation, exempted by a grandfather clause that allows a public corporation to own liquor stores, should not forfeit its exemption by selling interests to ease debt in a Chapter 11 reorganization.
The Texas Supreme Court has held a challenge to an "election integrity" law as too broad in its sweep to limit how Texas voting officials "solicit" mail-in ballots.
The plaintiffs, according to court records, seek more than $100 million in damages for wrongful death, physical impairment, disfigurement, mental anguish and loss of use and enjoyment of real property. Houston's 14th Court of Appeals dismissed some claims against Union Pacific but sent the case back to Harris County District Court to determine the fate of the others.
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