Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A Boston jury found a Massachusetts woman's mesothelioma death was caused by American Art Clay Company’s asbestos-laden products. This is the second multimillion-dollar verdict in three weeks for Dallas-based litigation boutique Iola, Gross & Forbes-King.
Dallas law firm Burns Charest represented a man who was left profoundly disabled after suffering a stroke just before boarding and another stroke while flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Fort Worth-based American Airlines had argued they bore no responsibility for his injuries because he declined to deplane before the flight departed for Madrid.
Although much has been said of HB 40’s newly effective changes to the Texas Business Courts’ jurisdiction, many may have overlooked HB 40’s revision to Section 74.162 of the Texas Government Code, which weaves the Business Court into the Texas framework for multidistrict litigation. At first blush, this amendment appears to open the door for the business courts to hear a wide array of consolidated MDL proceedings. But practitioners should remain mindful of two significant roadblocks that prevent parties from funneling MDL proceedings to the business courts
The lawyer representing the Bartholet family, Houston solo practitioner Seth Rubinson, who has represented pipeline companies in other litigation, made it clear in an interview with The Texas Lawbook Tuesday that both he and his client are not “anti-pipeline” and “believe infrastructure projects are important.”
“But this is a case about enforcing a restrictive covenant,” Rubinson said.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a lawsuit seeking more than $1 million is filed by a woman who was paralyzed after a tree fell on her SUV in East Dallas, amicus counsel defending Texas firearm restrictions dig back to 14th Century English law in support of their case, and a fight between competing Thai restaurants in Houston heats up.
Signal Peak, a new Houston-based litigation financing firm, is being sued by its founders' former place of employment, Siltstone Capital, which has attempted to get a temporary restraining order. Texas Business Court Presiding Judge Grant Dorfman denied the request.
Dallas federal Judge Barbara Lynn has shattered many legal industry glass ceilings, impacted the careers of hundreds of Texas lawyers and handled some of the biggest and most important trials in North Texas over the past quarter century — the civil rights trial against former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, the corruption trial of then-Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and terrorist Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in an effort to blow up the 60-story Fountain Place skyscraper.
Last week, Judge Lynn — the first woman in history to be the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas and widely praised as one of the best trial judges in the U.S. — stepped away from public service to join the litigation boutique founded by her husband, where she will focus on mediating complex and large-dollar disputes and advising lawyers involved in bet-the-company litigation.
As Judge Lynn enters her encore, legal experts agree that her career has had an historic impact on North Texas, the legal profession and the role of women in the law. (Illustration by William Pelic)
The city of Dallas failed to convince the Texas Supreme Court that its intervention was warranted in a dispute that started after the city granted, then revoked, then reinstated, a certificate of occupancy to a local poker room.
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