Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
T. John Ward, a pioneer of the ‘rocket docket,’ says he didn’t think his simple case-management plan – set strict deadlines and hold people to them – would beckon thousands of patent litigants to knock on his Marshall courtroom door.
President Joseph Biden has nominated U.S. Magistrate Dana Douglas of New Orleans to one of two open seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. An African American jurist who practiced energy litigation, products liability and intellectual property law during her 17 years in corporate law, Judge Douglas would be the first woman of color to serve on the Fifth Circuit.
Jim Cowles, who tried nearly 600 cases to a jury verdict, including a dozen trials while he was still in law school, died this past weekend, according to an announcement released Wednesday by Cowles Thompson, the firm he co-founded in 1978.
A federal judge in Austin has ruled that University of Texas School of Law professor Linda Mullenix and the university will go to trial over the educator’s claim that she has been discriminated against under the federal Equal Pay Act. An expert on class action litigation, Mullenix claims she was paid less than male professors who have less experience, fewer articles published and fewer professional honors.
A challenge to a high-profile patent that endangers a multibillion-dollar verdict. An SEC settlement worth hundreds-of-millions involving a Texas-based financial services giant. An Texas-based airline sued for a passenger’s wrongful arrest. All this and more in this week’s litigation roundup.
Ryan General Counsel John Smith said the Dallas-based tax services provider sued USA Today and parent company Gannett Co. because the media company published allegedly defamatory articles about Ryan’s business practices but never disclosed in its articles that Gannett employed Ryan to identify potential tax savings and then failed to pay for its services. Ryan, in the lawsuit filed Monday in Montgomery County, accuses the national newspaper chain of defamation, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, quantum meruit, suit on a sworn account and fraud.
A new legal thriller out this month details the story of some Texas plaintiff’s lawyers who took on the pork industry's most powerful player, a formidable opponent that provoked death threats, had the legal team followed and even changed some laws in the middle of the five-year nuisance litigation that resulted in five jury verdicts totaling hundreds-of-millions. The Lawbook sat down with Wastelands author Corban Addison Thursday when his book tour brought him to Dallas.
After years of operating the Corporate Deal Tracker Weekly Roundup, it dawned on The Lawbook staff that we should run something similar on the litigation end.
The idea budded out of a need to keep track of more litigation than our small staff is able to in the context of substantive, standalone articles. That way we can help you (and ourselves) keep abreast of even more of the Texas-sized quantity of lawsuits, trials, settlements, or other notable developments that fill business litigation dockets daily across the state.
We’re yet to develop any formal rules or structure to it, so in the meantime, we’re giving the first roundup a go with a handful of matters that have caught our eye in the last week.
If you have any matters that you think are worthy of a mention in a future roundup, please email your submission here: tlblitigation@texaslawbook.net
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