Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
After a highly successful, productive and largely uncontroversial first 18 months, the burgeoning Texas Business Court recently faced its first constitutional challenge. This article analyzes the plaintiff's arguments and considers what will happen if the question ever reaches the Texas Supreme Court.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, investigators with the SEC’s Fort Worth regional office accuse a Houston-area man of running a Ponzi-like scheme that defrauded about 150 investors out of $12.3 million, and the fight between Texas and Discord heats up.
May was the Texas Business Court’s busiest month yet. Even with a record-setting number of decisions across the court’s divisions, the Court maintained its principled and stalwart deference to the text of the contract. The month also continued a familiar stream of jurisdictional disputes testing the Business Court’s $5 million amount-in-controversy threshold, among other jurisdictional questions.
As the city has grown rapidly, this thriving business hub has seen increased complexity in legal disputes tied to technology, construction, energy, healthcare, and employment matters, just to name a few. With this increase, the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services has also steadily risen. Fortunately, Austin has long enjoyed a sophisticated ADR marketplace, serving this expanding business community for approximately three decades.
Scott Kelly accomplished more in his first year at ConocoPhillips than many in-house counsel accomplish in decades of service. Kelly joined the ConocoPhillips legal department in December 2024 but has already won three major trials, defeating $250 million in claims against ConocoPhillips and recovering $12 million in damages. And he settled a fourth case that involved multiple fatalities.
Citing these huge courtroom victories, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are awarding the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year Award for a Large Legal Department to Kelly.
Round Two of a fight between the state of Texas and proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services is now underway before Round One has ended, after a new lawsuit was filed by the state in Collin County this week.
The corporate landscape in the United States is shifting as a growing number of companies are making the choice to “DEXIT.” This article looks at reasons shareholders are citing in SEC filings for making the decision to redomicile in Texas.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Google gears up to defend against patent infringement claims in Midland, the battle between the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars won't be going to a jury trial, a $17 million Ponzi scheme architect from Houston goes to prison, and the Texas Supreme Court sides with a lawyer fending off claims from a dissatisfied client.
The Court continues to cement its judicial heavyweight status — with the month’s marquee event ringing in a 90-page opinion in the high-profile fight between the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars over control of the American Airlines Center. The Court also maintained its strategy of deploying Rule 166(g) to narrow cases early and tackled personal jurisdiction.
In the first quarter of 2026, the Texas Business Court continued to make progress through the ever-growing number of lawsuits appearing on its dockets. In the first few quarters following the Business Court opening its doors Sept. 1, 2024, the vast majority of its opinions resolved the jurisdictional and procedural questions entailed in standing up a new court with limited jurisdiction. In the second half of 2025, such procedural decisions were increasingly mixed with substantive decisions. Early 2026 marked a new phase of the Court gaining “cruising altitude,” with many of the initial procedural and jurisdictional questions behind it and most decisions addressing the merits of the disputes.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Winston & Strawn is representing the NFL Players Association in a federal lawsuit in Houston over the handling of a grievance and AZA and Beck Redden prevail on appeal in a California trade secrets dispute over a penile implant.
In a tag-team closing argument Monday afternoon, two attorneys representing a client facing a $432.7 million damages request by Energy Transfer told Business Court Judge Grant Dorfman the amount being sought is both unfounded and a drastic overreach.
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