Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A federal jury in Marshall began deliberating Thursday whether South Korean technology company Samsung Electronics infringed on cell phone wireless-charging patents obtained by California-based startup Mojo Mobility. McKool Smith lawyers asked for $303.5 million for its client. A legal team led by Paul Hastings denied Samsung infringed and asserted the patents at issue were invalid.
For the second day in a row, King & Spalding has multiple lateral partners joining the firm in Texas. On Wednesday, it is a team led by Austin trial partner Kim Bueno.
Lauren Varnado is the fourth lawyer to join Brown Rudnick’s one-month-old office in the Bayou City.
California-based startup company Mojo Mobility says Samsung Electronics flagship devices infringe on five of its wireless charging patents. McKool Smith lawyers representing Mojo and Samsung’s legal team led by Paul Hastings are in trial this week in Marshall.
The Texas Lawbook has two reporters in federal courts covering jury trials this week — Bruce Tomaso in Sherman following a civil rights trial and Krista Torralva in Marshall covering a big patent dispute. More from those cases this week.
But this week’s Litigation Roundup focuses on three court cases that resulted in two victories for the defense counsel and a federal appellate reversal for a white pro se plaintiff in a race discrimination lawsuit.
The Houston-based firm has recruited Brian G. Patterson from Akin. He focuses his practice on restrictive covenant litigation, wage-and-hour cases, OSHA enforcement and internal investigations.
The first of two-dozen workers aboard the Deepwater Asgard suing Transocean and other companies for ordering them to keep the giant rig operating even though it was in the direct path of Hurricane Zeta in October 2020 get to tell their harrowing stories to a Houston jury starting next week.
But lawyers for Transocean and the other defendants claim in new documents filed Sept. 5 that they have discovered a secret financial scheme involving the plaintiffs’ lawyers, their medical expert witnesses and a private equity firm that is allegedly providing funding for the litigation. The defense attorneys claim the scheme taints the medical testimony of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
The jurisdiction of the state’s new Fifteenth Court of Appeals has been challenged by a party in a dispute that had been on appeal before the First Court of Appeals in Houston. A total of 88 cases have been transferred to the Fifteenth Court of Appeals.
When Terry Bevill signed an affidavit in 2017 saying he didn’t think a friend could get a fair trial in Wood County in East Texas, he didn’t know he was signing the death certificate for his law enforcement career.
On Monday, a federal jury will determine if Bevill was wrongly fired.
In the four days since the Texas business courts opened for, well, business, only four cases have been filed. The high-dollar disputes will be adjudicated by new judges in the divisions covering Houston, Dallas and Austin. Attorneys from Bell Nunnally & Martin earned the title of first to file in the new courts.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a poker house’s appellate gamble pays off, Texas draws suit over a three-year old anti-ESG law, and a lawsuit that was seeking more than $7 billion in damages gets booted from Texas courts.
The group of doctors, Fondren Orthopedic, and HCA, a Nashville for-profit operator of healthcare facilities across the country, were in a limited partnership that owns and operates Texas Orthopedic Hospital. Fondren filed suit in October 2021, accusing HCA of violating a noncompete agreement by allowing 10 competing hospitals in the Houston area to offer similar services.
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