Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A California judge has rejected a jury’s $950 million award of punitive damages against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. The jury awarded $16 million in compensatory damages in October 2025.
This is just one of many cases Dallas-based Dean Omar Branham Shirley is involved with against J&J at the moment.
In a short hearing, Dallas County Judge Emily Tobolowsky granted Robert Morris’ motion to clarify and stay so they can proceed with mandamus before the Fifth Court of Appeals. The parties had reached an agreement.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Texas Supreme Court undoes a jury’s $26 million damages award in a fight involving a contract to deliver fracking water in North Dakota and Texas’ attorney general claims victory in a short-lived Oklahoma border dispute.
While Robert Morris, the convicted child sex offender and former pastor of Gateway Church, is sitting in a jail cell in Osage County, Oklahoma, the wake of his crime continues to ripple as the high-stakes litigation involving the megachurch and its elders is spreading and unfolding in courts across North Texas.
Morris, the church, its elders and congregants and Gateway’s insurance company are mired in lawsuits playing out in state and federal courts. Claims range from defamation to dishonesty about the allocation of tithe money to a dispute over retirement payments to Morris.
The Texas Lawbook's Michelle Casady takes you inside the morass of civil litigation.
A San Patricio County jury awarded a woman $198 million in damages stemming from the sexual assault and attempted murder she experienced over a decade ago. The jury deliberated for two hours after the three-day trial Wednesday and found David Strickland liable for assaulting and shooting of Mary Kristene Chapa. They awarded $100 million in exemplary damages.
A jury in the Third Division of the new Texas Business Court in Austin late Tuesday returned a verdict of at least $50 million in favor of ES3 Minerals, and in support of its claim that several former employees conspired to steal proprietary information and software to start their own competing businesses.
Caroline M. Hill, a 21-year-old student at Vanderbilt University, is seeking access to the books and records for the Lyda Hunt-Margaret Trust. Her lawsuit alleges she is a contingent beneficiary of the trust, which should contain at least $15 million but has instead been “looted” and “dissolved.” Disputes involving members of the Hill family and the trusts that hold the family’s fortune are not new.
Jurors in Harris County found a man was not liable for the death of a woman who had run into the road to pick up tools that had fallen off a tow truck. The jury deliberated for three hours following an eight-day trial that was spread over two weeks before it returned its verdict last week.
© Copyright 2026 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
