Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Following three weeks of testimony, lawyers for Axcess International and Baker Botts gave closing arguments Wednesday to the six-person jury. Dallas-based Axcess is seeking $51 million in damages.
A former employee of Dallas-based Genesco Sports Enterprises, Inc. claims his old bosses made knowingly false statements about him to Dallas County prosecutors in an effort to fraudulently help the company win a separate civil lawsuit against its former employee.
Justices gave wide deference to trial judges in deciding when awarding fees are appropriate.
A Dallas jury ruled Monday that Honeywell committed fraud against Hunt Consolidated by not telling the Dallas-based oil company about certain defects in Honeywell’s turbofan engines, which powered two of Hunt’s corporate Learjets. In a 10-2 verdict, the jury awarded Hunt nearly $1.4 million in damages, which included the costs for rental engine fees and repair of Hunt’s engines.
As a Dallas jury read its verdict, Mike Lynn pulled his iPhone from his pocket and sent one email: “We won. $319 million.” A few blocks away, U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn was on the bench in the middle of her own trial when the message arrived. “I wanted to be there in court with Mike when he won such a huge victory for his client,” she says. Barbara and Mike Lynn are Dallas’ undisputed legal power couple. She has shattered gender barriers her entire life and is the only lawyer to ever chair both the ABA’s Litigation and Judicial sections. Now a federal judge, Barbara Lynn has presided over some of the most controversial and important trials in North Texas during the past 15 years. Mike Lynn is a pit bull trial lawyer who left the comforts of a large silk stocking law firm 20 years ago to start one of the most successful and respected litigation boutiques in Texas. His biggest court victory – the $319 million win for Energy Transfer Partners – is the largest judgment ever issued by a state court jury in Dallas.
A Dallas private equity fund is taking officials of a Louisiana company to task over allegations that it secretly set up a “shell” company to funnel money out of the business when the fund owned a piece of that company.
A Dallas jury has awarded a Wise County couple $3 million in their case against Plano-based Aruba Petroleum.
Energy Transfer Partners is asking a judge to award it $914.6 million for damages it suffered over an alleged joint venture with Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners that failed in 2011.
Businesses in Texas and across the U.S. continue to spend more and more money on legal fees to fight high-stakes litigation and to deal with a growing number of regulatory enforcement actions from state, local and federal government agencies, according to a new survey scheduled to be released Tuesday. Norton Rose Fulbright’s 10th Annual Litigation Trends Survey found that 71 percent of corporations spent $1 million or more on litigation costs in 2013 – up from 53 percent the two previous years. More than 26 percent of companies saw their litigation costs exceed $10 million last year – an increase from 11 percent in 2011. Also, Marsha Gerber and Richard Smith take an indepth look into survey results about an increasingly active regulatory environment, and William Wood discusses why energy companies are concerned about the jump in investigations and regulatory matters.
Lawyers for Hunt Consolidated and Honeywell International pointed fingers at each other during closing arguments of the three-week products defects trial.
Abbott has filed a motion to intervene in lawsuits to make a legal argument that, if successful, would make it significantly more difficult for the victims’ families to prevail.
A former Houston Astros pitcher and 11 other guests attending a South Texas wedding party in 2008 go to trial next week on their allegations that Galveston police violently and viciously beat them without any provocation.
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