Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A pair of squabbling telecom equipment makers asked a Marshall panel for damages totaling $62 million on respective infringement claims of a combined 10 patents. Instead, they got a verdict killing parts of six of those patents.
A federal jury in Dallas on Thursday ordered the former manufacturers of metal-on-metal hip implants to pay $502 million to five Texans who claim they suffered severe injuries from the defective devices they had implanted. The jury heard 37 days of testimony from the plaintiffs, company officials and expert witnesses for both sides before finding that DePuy Orthopaedics and its parent company, Johnson & Johnson, were liable, negligent and responsible for the plaintiffs’ chronic and painful physical problems. After more than five days of deliberations, the eight-women and one-man jury awarded the five plaintiffs $142 million in actual damages and $360 million in punitive damages.
President Barack Obama has nominated five lawyers to serve on the U.S. District Courts in Texas, including the first Asian Pacific American. In the Northern District of Texas, President Obama nominated Judge E. Scott Frost, James Wesley Hendrix and Judge Irma Carillo Ramirez. In the Eastern District of Texas, he nominated Karen Gren Scholer. In the Western District, Obama nominated Judge Watler David Counts, III. If confirmed, Scholer’s nomination would mark the first time for an Asian Pacific American to serve as a federal district court judge in Texas or any courts encompassed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
A Dallas federal judge issued contempt charges and an arrest warrant late Thursday night against a Swiss businessman who headed an Irving optical company for violating multiple court orders involving an on-going civil lawsuit.
A Delaware court ruled Wednesday that a business suing another business did not violate the state’s prohibition against “champerty and maintenance” when it engaged a third-party to finance the litigation. The opinion is believed to be the first such ruling issued by a judge in the U.S.
Lawyers representing DraftKings said Friday evening that Paxton is wrong about Texas law.
Online fantasy sports operator DraftKings sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in Dallas County District Court Friday evening, seeking a court order to prevent Paxton from “forcing DraftKings out of business in Texas.” DraftKings lawsuit came only hours after Paxton announced the state had reached a settlement with the other major daily fantasy sports site, FanDuel.
A federal grand jury in Oklahoma has indicted Chesapeake Energy Corp. co-founder and former chief executive officer Aubrey McClendon on charges that he violated antitrust laws by conspiring with another energy company to fix the bidding process bids for the purchase of oil and natural gas leases in northwest Oklahoma from 2007 to 2012.
Baker Botts announced Friday that it has secured a $775 million settlement for firm client Liberty Media in a decade-long securities fraud litigation against Vivendi Universal S.A.
Harper Lee opened our minds and showed us the way toward a higher level of consciousness – and for this, may she always be remembered as a person who advanced humanity’s understanding of its flaws, needs, and hopes. In To Kill a Mockingbird,and Go Set a Watchman, Lee showed us a higher wisdom about race relations, justice and the necessary civility of discourse that needs to take place between insiders and outsiders before American society can think about rising from the fractious, partisan ditch our politics have now put us in.
Lawsuits related to layoffs and job reductions in the oil patch have dramatically increased during the past 10 months. Employment complaints filed in the Southern and Western districts of Texas hit all-time highs in 2015. If filings during the first six weeks of this year are an indication, 2016 could shatter all records in Texas for lawsuits filed due to job reductions.
The nation’s largest environmental organization is suing Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy and New Dominion, claiming their fracking efforts trigger earthquakes. The federal lawsuit filed in Oklahoma City says there were at least 5,800 earthquakes in Oklahoma last year – compared to a previous high 167 during the previous three decades, according to Bloomberg.
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