Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Jorge Solis was a tough prosecutor, a fair and learned judge, a mentor for dozens of lawyers and once considered a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. A former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Solis died Friday of an apparent heart attack while attending Mass. He was 70.
After four years of heavy litigating, lawyers at Bracewell, Yetter Coleman and Quinn Emanuel are preparing for battle. An upcoming trial between the lawyers' clients, IBM and KKR-owned BMC, will involve mainframe software, a lucrative project for AT&T and a nine-figure damages model.
In a surprise move for the typically employer-friendly state, Texas laws on sexual harassment officially became more protective of employees than federal law on Sept. 1. The “new Texas Sexual Harassment Law” expands liability for sexual harassment to employers of all sizes, and to individual managers, who may now be held personally liable for failing to remedy sexual harassment. The new statutes also heightened the standards on employers to take action and extends the deadline to file charges of discrimination based on sexual harassment.
A federal jury in U.S. District Court Judge Alan Albright's court ruled this week that Texas-based Profectus Technology failed to prove that Google infringed on Profectus’s patent for a “digital picture display frame,” an internet visual interface, in developing the Google Nest Hub.
A federal district court in Houston has followed the recommendation of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones to dismiss all remaining litigation between French bank Natixis Funding Corp. and GenOn Mid-Atlantic over a $130 million credit arrangement gone south for two coal-fired power plants in Maryland.
After 12 years of litigation, a federal judge rules Susman’s client, the Dutch energy company Vitol, is entitled to keep the money it received for supplying fuel oil to Puerto Rico’s state-run electric utility between 2005 and 2009.
Two former top federal prosecutors in Texas landed a $36 million jury verdict in a False Claims Act case in Alabama Friday. Treble damages in the qui tam case, which involved the sale of helicopters to the U.S. Army, could reach more than $100 million. Litigation Writer Natalie Posgate has the names and details.
ERCOT, operator of the Texas electric grid, says it was just following orders when it charged Brazos Electric Power Coop roughly $2 billion for power and related services provided during the deadly storm in February – a staggering bill that drove Brazos, the state’s largest and oldest electric cooperative, into bankruptcy. The Texas Lawbook has the story.
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