Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
In a tag-team closing argument Monday afternoon, two attorneys representing a client facing a $432.7 million damages request by Energy Transfer told Business Court Judge Grant Dorfman the amount being sought is both unfounded and a drastic overreach.
The advent of AI is being billed as an upgrade on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. The legal industry appears to be digesting AI tools more comfortably every day. We nevertheless urge caution. Any new technology can have unintended side effects. Smartphones, for instance, devour our attention. We all knew watching too much TV was bad for us, but smartphones are like TV screens on steroids. Like the radio transmitter worn by Harrison Bergeron’s father in Vonnegut’s 1961 short story, smartphones displace deep thought.
AI could be worse.
DENVER — What’s expected to be a five-day trial commenced Monday in U.S. District Judge William Martinez’s courtroom in the case between Chris Parker and Charif Souki over an alleged agreement not to sell Tellurian stock. The eight-member jury will decide whether a text message exchange is a binding contract.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a distributor of energy drink Alani is sued by the family of a 17-year-old girl who died after consuming the beverages, and Samsung tells a Texas judge the invalidation of a patent by a California judge means it's entitled to a new trial in a dispute that had ended with a $78 million verdict against it.
The Trump administration is trying to persuade a federal appeals court to restore President Donald Trump’s executive orders against Houston-based Susman Godfrey and three other law firms, arguing that a president’s power to declare the firms national security threats is "unreviewable" by the courts.
The Dallas Mavericks franchise filed notice that it was immediately dropping its tortious interference claim in its battle against the Dallas Stars. The move comes a week after the Texas Business Court denied the Stars’ five motions for summary judgment and granted the Mavericks' motion for declaratory judgment.
The Texas Business Court dismissed a fraud lawsuit against an Indiana-based trailer manufacturer, determining the dispute did not belong in Texas courts. Texas-based Daimler Truck Financial Services was seeking $28 million in damages.
In this edition of Asked & Answered, Norton Rose Fulbright partner Julie Searle talks about being inspired by her parents to go to law school and her decade of experience at the Department of Justice. From government to in-house to private practice, Searle draws on these experiences in her role as a litigator in Norton Rose Fulbright’s Austin office.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a San Antonio-based Jackson Walker partner is tapped to represent a man in a $37 million bid-rigging conspiracy case in Hawaii, and Camp Mystic asks a Travis County district judge to send litigation over the fatal July 4 flood to arbitration.
Stonewall Gas Gathering, a West Virginia pipeline owner, has been ordered to pay $1 in a breach of contract case before the Texas Business Court. Antero Resources claimed it had suffered $200 million in damages from the alleged breach.
The Texas Business Court in Dallas trimmed the claims for trial by granting summary judgment for the Mavericks, finding the Stars didn’t comply with the “location commitment” in the parties’ contract when the team moved its headquarters to Frisco in 2003. There will be a hearing Tuesday morning to determine where the jury trial will take place next month.
March finds the court firing on all cylinders, producing an increasingly large (and increasingly diverse) output of opinions covering a wide range of issues at nearly every stage of the litigation life cycle — from remand fights to temporary injunction battles and from jurisdictional disputes to yet another trial verdict (this time from a bench trial).
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