Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The Texas Supreme Court delivered some bad news for The Boeing Company on Friday morning when it issued an opinion clearing the way for the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association to sue the company for damages caused by its alleged misrepresentations about the airworthiness of the 737 MAX. Even with the court’s ruling, the union could face an uphill climb to prove and collect any damages in the case.
During a daylong hearing in Martin County Friday, a judge was told Pioneer Natural Resources had "fabricated" the basis for its lawsuit seeking $534 million in damages from a smaller Dallas-based competitor that it accused of interfering with its West Texas leases. Pioneer says the request for sanctions and dismissal are “baseless” and that Pony Oil's allegations are sanctionable on their own.
The Texas Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit from a woman who was severely injured in a small plane crash in North Texas. The court found that she failed to produce evidence that the Austrian manufacturer of the plane’s engine specifically intended its product to enter the Texas stream of commerce.
Lawyers with Dallas-based Dean Omar Branham Shirley battled a Houston partner from King & Spalding in a Boston courtroom over the past month in the latest trial over whether Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder caused the plaintiff's life-threatening mesothelioma. The Massachusetts jury apparently decided that both Texas lawyers doing battle in their courtroom made strong arguments.
This week, the first contested final judgment in a case before the Texas Business Court was entered. Proponents of the new court argued it would provide an avenue for parties to obtain quick decisions in complex business disputes and Monday’s final judgment, issued just shy of eight months after the case was filed in the business court, seems to support that.
Unfortunately, the steady decline of civil jury trials has shaped the litigation landscape in Texas and across the nation for decades. Although multiple factors contribute to this trend, the emergence of reliable artificial intelligence tools may offer a realistic path to reversing it. This article discusses research on AI in the courts, explains how generative and predictive systems could reinvigorate the Texas trial docket and proposes concrete steps for judges, law firms, corporate counsel and the Legislature to harness AI’s upside to increase jury trials and expand justice access.
E. Lawrence “Larry” Vincent joined the firm after nine years at Burns Charest. During his time there, he was the co-lead attorney in a successful representation of a group of Houston homeowners alleging government mismanagement of reservoirs lead to flooding of their properties during Hurricane Harvey.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, an attorney who cited made-up cases to the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas gets sanctioned, American Airlines is sued by a former pilot who alleges he was shortchanged on disability benefits, and the Texas Supreme Court answers a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in one of the final weeks of its term.
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