Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
As the first month of 2022 comes to a close, in-person civil jury trials in Texas remain few and far between due to Covid. Natalie Posgate has updates on the status of civil jury trials in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio state courts.
Judge Ashley Wysocki defers ruling on sanctions motion in assault case against former NFL player, but cautions lawyers on both sides that personal attacks must cease.
The CEO of North Texas-based residential real estate development lender United Development Funding and three of his colleagues were found guilty late this afternoon on securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges. After nearly two days of deliberation, the jury convicted UDF CEO Hollis Greenlaw, CFO Cara Delin Obert, director of asset management Jeffrey Brandon Jester and partnership president and committee member Benjamin Lee Wissink on all counts. Dallas Business Journal reporter Bill Hethcock was in the courtroom every day and has the details on the verdict.
After more than a dozen years of motions, objections, petitions and appeals, the multibillion-dollar civil fraud case against five banks that provided financial services to Ponzi scheme perpetrator R. Allen Stanford and his investment firm will finally go to trial later this year in Houston.
A federal judge, who has overseen the massive litigation brought by thousands of investors who claim they were defrauded more than $5 billion in hard money by Stanford and the Stanford Financial Group between 1999 and 2008, said the biggest and final of all the lawsuits is ready to be sent back to Houston to be decided by a judge and jury in the town where the scheme took place.
An investor in Houston-based Tellurian Investments has sued Charif Souki on claims that the company co-founder and chairman of the board reneged on a promise to pay back the investor for tens of millions in losses after Tellurian’s stock value plummeted.
During a 90-minute webinar over Tuesday’s lunch hour, Northern District Chief Judge Barbara Lynn and Southern District Chief Judge Lee Rosenthal talked retirement plans (or lack thereof) and courtroom trends from the pandemic and when jury trials (currently paused by Omicron) in their jurisdictions are likely to resume
Although the case "facts were difficult," the Fifth Circuit vacated a tax evasion conviction of Houston lawyer Jack Stephen Pursley on a simple premise: a statute of limitations defense that the three-judge panel said was erroneously shot down by the trial court without analysis.
A Las Vegas judge on Wednesday preserved a majority of the public record in a case between TeamHealth and UnitedHealthcare that recently rendered a $63 million jury verdict for three groups of ER physicians over reimbursement rates. The ruling reflects the vast public interest the case has garnered from doctors in Texas and beyond as they consider their own legal rights against insurers.
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