Keurig Dr Pepper’s Legal Department – ‘$1 Billion Profit Center’

This is the story of three lawyers at Keurig Dr Pepper — Jim Baldwin, Anthony Shoemaker and Stephen Cole — who took a huge risk in leading a normally conservative, litigation-adverse company in suing a business partner, the business partner’s profanity-spewing founder and Dr Pepper’s biggest and universally feared competitor, Coca-Cola. Along with outside counsel at Gibson Dunn, they took a highly complex dispute and boiled it down to one sentence in a contract. By the end, they had opposing counsel pleading with the judge to push for a settlement weeks before trial. The result: a $925 million victory and a finalist for the 2022 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.

January 13, 2023 Mark Curriden

Litigation Roundup: Dallas Owes Developer $850K, Exxon Challenges ‘Windfall Tax’

In the first edition of Litigation Roundup in 2023, the City of Dallas has to pay up in a real estate dispute, Exxon Mobil sets its sights on undoing a “windfall tax” the European Union has imposed on energy companies and the Fifth Circuit revives an excessive force case against a cop who punched a man at Hobby Airport.

January 9, 2023 Michelle Casady

Fight Over Noneconomic Damages Cap Teed Up for Texas Supreme Court

If a trucking company gets its way at the Texas Supreme Court, the grief of rich plaintiffs will be worth more in wrongful death damages than the grief of poorer plaintiffs, numerous law professors and a trial attorney interest group argue.

January 4, 2023 Michelle Casady

Trustmark Bank Settles Stanford Ponzi Scheme Lawsuit for $100M

One of five banks facing a multibillion-dollar fraud trial next month in Houston for providing financial services to Ponzi scheme perpetrator R. Allen Stanford and his investment firm has agreed to settle its part of the case for $100 million. Mississippi-based Trustmark Corporation, the parent of Trustmark National Bank, agreed late New Year’s Eve to pay the $100 million instead of facing a federal jury alongside four other banks accused of “aiding, abetting and participating in the fraudulent scheme” perpetrated by Stanford and his associates.

January 3, 2023 Mark Curriden

‘Medical Emergency’ Forces Mistrial in Oft-Delayed $158M Pharmacy Fraud Case

After eight aborted settings since 2017, the trial on bribery and kickback charges was under way in Dallas when a defense lawyer needed surgery. Rather than resuming after a monthlong delay — and making jurors work through the holidays — U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay rescheduled the trial for next September.

December 29, 2022 Bruce Tomaso

Senior U.S. District Judge Thad Heartfield Dies

Senior U.S. District Judge Thad Heartfield, who served in the Eastern District of Texas, died Tuesday. He was 82.

December 28, 2022 Michelle Casady

Fort Worth Bank, Former VP Allegedly Aided Home Flipper’s Ponzi Scheme

Bankruptcy trustee James E. Cross alleges Dallas-area home flipper Skyler Aaron Cook, who has filed for bankruptcy in Arizona, defrauded investors out of at least $3 million in a scheme aided by Valliance Bank. The bank and its former executive vice president have denied the allegations.

December 28, 2022 Michelle Casady

Top Commercial Litigation in 2022

As restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic were rolled back in 2022, courts across the state went to work adjudicating long-delayed cases. Here, in no particular order, The Texas Lawbook looks back on some of the most significant litigation Texas lawyers handled in 2022. 

December 27, 2022 Michelle Casady