Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Lauren Harrison and Mani Walia have clerked for federal appellate judges, practiced at premier law firms and done pioneering work in the world of litigation funding. This week, the duo launched Signal Peak Partners, a Houston-based investment firm that customizes litigation financing, private credit solutions and monetization options for plaintiffs and their lawyers.
A longstanding statutory link between judicial pay and legislative pensions almost derailed a bill to increase district court judges’ salaries. Last-minute negotiations between the House and Senate led to an agreement to end the link by 2030. (File photo of Texas House Rep. Jeff Leach by Tony Gutierrez/AP)
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a woman who alleges she was raped by the NBA’s Zion Williamson hires The Lanier Law Firm to pursue her claims in California court and two former high-ranking lawyers in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office who launched their own firm are named as defendants in a lawsuit brought by a former coworker who alleges she was the victim of sexual harassment.
In an announcement, the firm said he died following a long illness. In 1982, Godfrey joined his friend, Steve Susman, who launched his own firm two years earlier. Together, the pair built Susman Godfrey into a preeminent, commercial litigation boutique with a reputation for taking big cases on a contingency basis.
Fisher Phillips on Monday announced it has hired Reed Smith labor and employment partner Emily Harbison, who will serve as the firm’s regional managing partner in Houston.
Texas legal history is replete with young hot-shot trial lawyers leaving their big corporate firms to start their own operations — from David Beck, Paul Yetter and John Zavitsanos in Houston to Mike Lynn, Pete Marketos and Clayton Bailey of Dallas. This week, John S. Adams hopes to join this elite group of highly successful trial lawyers-turned-business leaders who have their name on the front door. Friday was Adams’ last day as a partner in the Dallas office of the elite global law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Today, he launched his own law litigation boutique, the John S. Adams Law Firm, where he is the only lawyer but plans to add lawyers quickly.
Dykema Gossett has been disqualified from representing a group of plaintiffs suing a dentist and his many practices after a judge in Dallas determined the law firm had previously represented the dentist in other legal matters that are “substantially related” to this case.
There are many ways to be defamed: verbal rumors, print news stories, television news stories and social media posts, just to name a few. But now — based on a newly filed lawsuit against Meta for its “Llama” AI program — we have to add “defamation by artificial intelligence” to our lexicon.
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