Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The Texas Supreme Court is revisiting the high-profile issue of when pipelines are common carriers allowed to condemn private property. Once again the dispute involves the Denbury Green Pipeline that transports carbon dioxide through southeast Texas.
Plaintiffs seeking class action status in federal civil racketeering lawsuits in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi involving pyramid scheme saw their path to victory in the courtroom get significantly easier this weekend. In an 11—5 en banc decision, the Fifth ruled that a trial judge in Houston was correct when he granted class action status to alleged victims in a lawsuit against a multilevel marketing unit of utility provider Stream Energy. Legal experts say the signals a major shift by the appeals court.
Barbara Culver Clack, the first woman to practice law in Midland and the second woman to serve full time on the Texas Supreme Court, died Sunday in Midland. She was 90. Born in Dallas and a 1951 graduate of the SMU Dedman School of Law, Clack was appointed to the state’s highest court in 1988 by Gov. Bill Clements.
A federal appeals court has tossed out an appeal filed by football fans affected by the 2011 Super Bowl seating fiasco in Dallas who were unsatisfied with essentially every outcome of their lawsuit against the National Football League that went to trial last spring.
Texas’s highest ranking judge said he supports UNT Dallas College of Law’s first class of graduating students taking the Texas bar exam next July – even if the American Bar Association refuses to give its stamp of approval.
A Beaumont TV station is seeking attorney’s fees under the Texas Citizens Participation Act after winning dismissal of a libel lawsuit filed over a broadcast about a doctor’s disciplinary order. In its first decision involving a media defendant seeking dismissal of a defamation case under the act, a divided Texas Supreme Court last month reversed an appeals court and a trial court that had denied the station’s motion to dismiss.
The Texas Supreme Court recently reversed a $752,000 judgment against Union Pacific, finding no evidence that the railroad could have reduced the risk of West Nile in a mosquito-laden area near the Gulf Coast. In it's ruling, the court recognized the common-law doctrine of ferae naturae, which protects landowners from liability for harm caused by wild animals or insects.
Texas justices ruled that electronic communications between a Canadian company and a Houston firm negotiating the sale of Colombian mineral assets were insufficient to confer Texas jurisdiction over the Canadian company. A strongly worded dissent accused the majority of ignoring the realities of complex business negotiations in a time where e-mail communication is the norm.
The Texas Supreme Court dashed the hopes of drillers, concrete providers, business groups and limited government advocates in a ruling that turned on the role that pipes and tubes play in the physical changes of oil and gas moving from underground to the surface.
An Edinburg doctors’ hospital is not liable for a botched delivery by one of its physician partners because the doctor was not acting with authority of the partnership, justices ruled Friday. The decision clarified a situation in which a limited partner in a doctor-owned hospital also practices at the hospital. The court said that such doctors are acting under their separate admitting privileges, not with any authority of the partnership.
It is the first time for the Fifth Circuit to rule on the application of a most favored nations (MFN) clause in which the original license and the later, more favorable license both included lump sum payments.
A $1.4 million civil penalty won by optometrists who leased space in Wal-Mart stores equates to exemplary damages barred under a 1995 tort reform law, the Texas Supreme Court said Friday.
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