Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Harris County Judge Ursula Hall has until 5 p.m. Monday to rule on a motion that has been pending before her in a foreclosure dispute for three years and five months or the First Court of Appeals has said it will initiate contempt proceedings.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the former general counsel of the Houston Housing Authority has her qui tam False Claims Act suit partially revived by the Fifth Circuit, an allegedly undisclosed personal relationship between a magistrate judge and a plaintiff attorney who secured a $124.5 million award in her court gets a second look, and a former CEO of a software company loses his bid to keep a $20 million suit in Texas courts.
The league’s retirement plan is appealing a Dallas federal judge’s 2022 ruling in favor of former running back Michael Cloud, who said he was denied the benefits he deserved after concussions and other injuries cut his playing career short. The judge wrote that Cloud’s case fits a pattern by the pension plan of nickel-and-diming retired players “suffering from the devastating effects of severe head trauma.”
Harris County District Judge Elaine Palmer has ordered attorneys Michael D. Sydow and Chidi D. Anunobi to take 10 hours of legal ethics education classes each year for the next five years after finding they filed for a lawsuit for an improper purpose on behalf of their litigation management company client, Iron Oak. The lawsuit was brought in an attempt to collect $10 million from inventors Michael E. Porter and John T. Preston and their company Continuum Energy Technologies.
How trial and appellate courts should review challenges to outsize noneconomic damages awards has been the talk of the Texas bar. With the Texas Supreme Court indicating openness to verdict comparisons, defense counsel should consider, when the facts permit, using visuals such as scattergrams to show that a verdict lies so far outside the norm.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas finds a Chinese company infringed eight patents held by Texas-based Atlas Global Technologies, the Fifth Circuit rejects the University of North Texas’ bid to end a professor’s First Amendment retaliation claim and a fired Texas prison guard who represented himself on appeal prevails in a discrimination case.
Prominent Dallas trial lawyer Paul Genender joined Paul Hastings as a partner Monday to be the firm’s head of litigation in Texas and co-chair of its Houston office. Genender, who had been a partner at Weil Gotshal in Dallas for the past seven years, will split his time between Houston and Dallas.
After a daylong evidentiary hearing, U.S. District Judge Karen Gren Scholer said the radio station’s owners failed to show they would suffer irreparable harm if the new podcast by Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp continues until December, when a civil trial is scheduled to determine whether the two violated their noncompete agreements with KTCK "The Ticket."
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