Kirkland and Bell Nunnally Win Jury Trial for AMLI Residential in $38M Dispute

Kirkland & Ellis partner Jeremy Fielding and AMLI Chair Gregory Mutz, a Vietnam War infantry lieutenant turned lawyer turned real estate developer, stood side by side last Wednesday as a Houston jury delivered its verdict. AMLI stood accused of lying, breach of contract and destroying evidence related to the $57 million sale in 2012 of a Houston luxury apartment complex. The verdict, both men say, brought them to tears.

February 21, 2022 Mark Curriden

Widow: $26 Million Life Insurance Was Surprise

Blanca Monica Villareal, accused in a civil suit of faking her husband’s death in Mexico City to swindle insurers Transamerica and Prudential, claimed that she knew nothing about his finances. Testifying in Spanish, she told Houston jurors she couldn’t read the insurance policies and didn’t know what they were when she found them, because they were in English.

February 18, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Mikal Watts Grills Investigator Who Concluded $26M Life-Insurance Claim Was for Mexico City Man Still Alive

If a Mexico City businessman faked his death in 2016 to steal $26 million from two U.S. life-insurance giants, he’s done a remarkable job of lying low since, the lawyer

February 17, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Investigator to Jury in $26M Life-Insurance Case: Two People Identified the Insured as Alive More than a Year After His ‘Death’

A private investigator testified Wednesday that two people at a Mexico City office where he was searching for the supposedly dead Eduardo Rosendi, flashing Rosendi’s photo, told him the man in the photo worked there as an accountant – and one had seen him earlier that day. The investigator was a critical witness in the third day of a federal trial in which a $26 million insurance payout is in the balance – if Rosendi is not dead. But Mikal C. Watts, the beneficiary's attorney, should get his chance at cross-examination Thursday.

February 16, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Employment Suits Drop in Texas As Pandemic Drags On

Federal wage-and-hour suits have been steadily declining since the first half of 2020, when suits rose 19% from pre-pandemic days. And federal employment-discrimination lawsuits filed in Texas under Title VII were also down. Many factors may be at work, including the pandemic, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the backlog of government agencies that oversee the litigation.

February 16, 2022 Natalie Posgate

$26M Insurance Claim: Fraud ‘So Obvious,’ or Investigation Not ‘Indisputable’

The plaintiff's attorney, Mikal C. Watts, on cross-examination of the insurers' lead witness, attacked his investigator's thoroughness and his conclusions as hardly indisputable.

February 16, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Fort Worth Bankruptcy Judge Hears Details of $33M Elevate Credit Settlement

The multistate predatory lending and fraud litigation pitting more than a million low-income plaintiffs against two Fort Worth financial tech companies – Think Finance and Elevate Credit – is in “its final chapter,” lawyers told a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlan Hale Wednesday. Elevate agreed to pay $33 million to settle three class actions and an adversarial bankruptcy complaint that alleged a decadelong scheme of predatory lending and subsequent corporate transactional legal maneuvering that claimed victims in nearly every state.

February 16, 2022 Mark Curriden & Natalie Posgate

Fort Worth Fintech Firm Settles Massive Litigation for $33M

Fort Worth technology-based financial lender Elevate Credit has agreed to pay $33 million as part of a proposed settlement agreement related to a web of litigation across the United States, which alleged a decade-long scheme of predatory lending and subsequent corporate transactional legal maneuvering that victimized more than a million low-income people.

February 15, 2022 Natalie Posgate & Mark Curriden