Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A trial team from Munsch Hardt successfully fended off the claims levied against client Flowco Production Solutions. Instead of raising the highly compensated employee exemption commonly seen in cases involving oilfield services, they told the jury these plaintiffs were exempt from overtime under the administrative employee exemption.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a Dallas lawyer secures a $29 million jury verdict in a talc case and the Texas attorney general gets a deadline to respond to a request from whistleblowers to reinstate their case pending before the Texas Supreme Court.
Our ethical rules do not seem to address this issue directly, but there are at least three, maybe four, ethical obligations (we’ll call them touchstones) that dance around an answer to the question.
As a Houston arbitrator and former appellate justice, Michael Massengale was the perfect lawyer for the Texas House investigatory committee to choose to help investigate and write the official report about that tragic day last May when so much went wrong and 19 children and two teachers were murdered. For the first time since the report was released, Massengale has given an in-depth interview to Texas Lawbook reporter Janet Elliott about his role in the investigation, the challenges he and the committee faced and his hopes for legislative improvements to police training and school safety.
A former Enron trader is suing some of the nation’s largest energy and financial firms, claiming they diverted natural gas supplies and cut off production in a scheme to artificially drive up prices ahead of Winter Storm Uri in 2021. CirclesX Recovery claims firms including Energy Transfer, Kinder Morgan, BP, Conoco Phillips and CenterPoint Energy engaged in an Enron-style scheme to cut off gas production or divert supplies into storage days ahead of freezing temperatures that would eventually cripple the Texas power grid.
The discrimination and retaliation case lodged against one of the most prestigious funeral homes in the country, Houston’s Geo. H. Lewis & Sons Funeral Directors, didn’t gain traction with a jury that rejected William Coleman’s claims and awarded him no damages. Carter Crow of Norton Rose Fulbright, who represented the defendant, said he believes these types of religious discrimination lawsuits have become more common post-covid.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Keurig gets approval to settle a class action lawsuit over claims it made about the recyclability of its coffee pods for $10 million and the Dallas Court of Appeals held that a Jane Doe should be allowed to proceed with her claims Jerry Jones forcibly kissed her at AT&T Stadium.
Friday morning the Texas Supreme Court determined that Robert Cox and a group of nine other cotton farmers presented insufficient evidence to proceed with their lawsuit alleging Helena Chemical Company’s negligent aerial application of Sendero damaged their crops. A trial court had tossed the suit on summary judgment, but the Eastland Court of Appeals partially revived it, teeing up the high court battle.
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