Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a federal judge in Texas determines an insurer does not have to cover policyholders accused of stealing $80 million in Bitcoin through a malware attack, the operators of a pyramid scheme agree to pay Texas $10.76 million and the state draws a lawsuit from booksellers over a new regulation.
In the nine months attorney Kyle Pugh worked on the case, he took 20 depositions, hired numerous experts and prepared to simultaneously prove the government was responsible for his client’s injuries and that the orthopedic surgeon who treated Michael Le was not.
Texas prides itself on its rugged, independent spirit. Often, that’s a good thing. However, there is an aspect of insurance law in which Texas stands gloomily distant from the other 49 states. They are united, and Texas is a stuck-in-the-mud outlier rather than a paragon in its isolation. Ironically, it’s an area in which the Texas jurisprudence is distinctly detrimental to Texas businesses.
Deliberations, which began Wednesday afternoon, are to continue Thursday morning in the federal fraud trial. The defendant, Richard Hall, is accused of running a bogus-prescription scam that cost U.S. taxpayers $55 million.
The jury of five women and three men heard six days of testimony before beginning deliberations around 1 p.m. Wednesday. About three hours later they determined Schlumberger had not discriminated against Jessica Cheatham based on her sex, had not subjected her to a hostile work environment, had not retaliated against her and had not constructively discharged its former field engineer.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, closing arguments are coming soon in a $55 million pharmacy fraud trial, Porter Hedges gets $15.35 million for a developer client in an eminent domain fight and a jury in Waco on Friday unanimously determined Google owes $339 million for patent infringement.
In 1951, Judge Irving R. Kaufman wrangled to get the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, charged with stealing the “secret” of the atomic bomb and handing it to the monstrous Joseph Stalin. Judge Kaufman was 40, one of the youngest federal judges in America and only sixteen months in office. During the trial, he often intervened in ways that helped the government. Upstairs in his chambers, he conducted secret, ex parte meetings with prosecutors, including the infamous Roy Cohn. No one knows what they discussed. Once jurors convicted, he deftly advertised his anguish over the sentence and alluded to solitary soul-searching in his empty, dimly lit synagogue. Now the hour for judgment had come.
The Texas Lawbook is pleased to publish an excerpt of Houston lawyer Martin Siegel's new book about the judge he clerked for decades ago.
A former Schlumberger field engineer who is suing the company over alleged sexual harassment and discrimination she experienced during her two-and-a-half-year employment with the oilfield services company was on the stand for much of Thursday and Friday, sharing her claims with jurors in her own words.
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