In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Jerry Jones takes an “L” in his latest bid to bring an early end to a sexual assault lawsuit, American Airlines is hit with a permanent injunction in an ESG-related investor suit, and a Houston-based furniture company secures a $2.1 million final judgment.
The Litigation Roundup is a weekly feature highlighting the work Texas lawyers are doing inside and outside the state. Have a development we should include next week? Please let us know at tlblitigation@texaslawbook.net.
Harris County District Court
Final $2.1M Judgment Entered in Favor of Furniture Co.
An online furniture company based in Houston that a jury found had been swindled by a warehouse, inventory and shipping company has been awarded a $2.1 million final judgment.
Harris County District Judge Latosha Lewis Payne presided over the trial and over a separate bench trial on attorney fees and entered final judgment Sept. 25 totaling about $2.1 million. That total included the nearly $785,000 in damages the jury determined Edloe Finch was entitled to, $167,000 in prejudgment interest, nearly $40,000 in court costs and about $1.1 million in attorney fees.
The jury in February had determined Edloe Finch was entitled to damages across four categories — for incorrect label charges, incorrect “pick and pack charges,” incorrect weight charges and incorrect pallet charges.
Edloe Finch filed suit in February 2023 alleging it discovered that UNIS LLC had, over the course of two years, overbilled it by nearly $800,000 by inflating weights and included charges for unused supplies. UNIS filed counterclaims seeking more than $2 million it alleged it was owed for work it had done for Edloe but failed to bill for.
Trial began Jan. 29 with jury selection, and jurors heard seven days of testimony before beginning deliberations that lasted about an hour.
The jury determined Edloe Finch did not have an obligation to pay UNIS.
Edloe Finch is represented by Matthew P. Whitley, Nicholas M. Bruno and Fariha Jawed of Beck Redden.
UNIS is represented by Brooke M. Bohlen, Alexander D. Good and Brett W. Schouest of Dykema Gossett.
The case number is 2023-11022.
Dallas County District Court
Jerry Jones Denied Early Win in Assault Lawsuit
Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys Football Club won’t be getting an early win in a lawsuit brought by a woman who alleges Jones forcibly kissed her on the mouth and grabbed her without consent at AT&T Stadium.
Dallas County District Judge Aiesha Redmond signed the order denying Jones’ motion for summary judgment Oct. 2. Jannine Green filed her lawsuit against Jones and the team in September 2020 stemming from an alleged encounter with Jones in September 2018 in the Tom Landry Room.
Jones is represented by Levi G. McCathern II, Ty M. Sheaks, Jennifer L. Falk and Elois E. Caswell of McCathern PLLC. In a motion for summary judgment filed in July, Jones’ legal team argued there’s no “factual dispute” for a jury to resolve in this case because Green’s “version of events simply could not have occurred.”
“Plaintiff’s timeline is refuted by timestamped photographs that prove she fabricated this lawsuit
for financial gain,” the motion argues. “Her physical account of the incident is incompatible with the layout of the room, the presence of witnesses, and the basic principles of logic and physics. Plaintiff’s claims are not merely unsupported, they are impossible, and under Texas law, a case grounded in impossibility cannot proceed to trial.”
Green is represented by Thomas D. Bowers III of Irving, who filed a response in September arguing the “mountain of evidence” his client has that supports her claim, including at least three eyewitnesses, should preclude summary judgment.
“Ms. Green’s claims are remarkably simple and consistent, despite Jones’s attempts to complicate them. Jannie Green attended a Dallas Cowboys after-game event in the Tom Landry Room (or Owner’s Club) on September 16, 2018, which Jerry Jones also attended,” the response reads. “At the event, Jones grabbed her buttocks, pulled her in, kissed her on the mouth, and tried to force his tongue into her mouth. Specifically, Ms. Green testified that, when she was talking with Mr. Jones after taking pictures with him, he ‘grabbed me, and he brought me into him, and he tried to stick his tongue in my mouth.’”
The Texas Supreme Court denied a petition for review from Jones in September 2023, leaving in place a February 2023 ruling from the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas that revived the lawsuit. Judge Redmond had dismissed the lawsuit in February 2022.
The case is currently set for a July 20 trial.
The case number is DC-20-10127.
Connecticut Superior Court
DOBS Gets $10M in Punitives Added to $15M Win Against Johnson & Johnson
Last week, about one year after securing a $15 million jury verdict against Johnson & Johnson in an asbestos-related lawsuit, Dallas-based Dean Omar Branham Shirley got a final judgment in the case that tacked on $10 million in punitive damages.
DOBS represented Evan Plotkin, who is suffering from mesothelioma, at trial. He accused J&J’s baby powder of causing the cancer in the lining of his lungs and is one of thousands of plaintiffs suing J&J, alleging the company knew its baby powder contained cancer-causing asbestos for decades. J&J has denied its talc-based baby powder caused cancer and Erik Haas, the company’s vice president of litigation, said the company would appeal the outcome in Plotkin’s case.
According to the 25-page memorandum issued by the court Oct. 1, J&J had argued that the court should award either no punitive damages or an amount less than $5 million. DOBS, meanwhile, was seeking the statutory maximum of $30 million.
The court wrote that the evidence presented and trial and considered by the jury demonstrates “that the J&J defendants remained — at a minimum — indifferent to, or willfully ignorant of, the potential adverse health effects of [Johnson’s baby powder.”
“Therefore, the court concludes, based on the evidence, that the defendants’ actions were reprehensible, and the degree of their blameworthiness was consistent with recklessness, at the least,” the memorandum reads.
DOBS attorney Ben Braly praised the court’s ruling in a news release.
“We sincerely hope that Johnson & Johnson will take this opinion to heart and consider the damage they caused to people like Evan Plotkin across the country,” the statement reads.
The case number is CV-21-6109520.
U.S. District Court, District of Columbia
Musk Can’t Move SEC’s Suit to Texas, New York
A lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accusing Elon Musk of violating disclosure rules in the wake of his Spring 2022 purchase of Twitter common stock will remain in the District of Columbia.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan issued a 16-page opinion Oct. 2 denying Musk’s bid to have the litigation moved to either the Western District of Texas, where he lives, or the Southern District of New York, where he told the court he “transacts business” on the New York Stock Exchange. Musk had also argued transfer to New York was appropriate because there is a pending putative securities class action case there where Twitter investors accuse him of violating securities laws via his late filing of Schedule 13D and Schedule 13G documents related to the purchase of Twitter stock.
Musk was in Austin when he began making the at-issue purchases of Twitter stock, he told the court, and litigating the dispute in the Texas capital would be more convenient for him.
“Mr. Musk notes that he resides in the Western District of Texas, but he does not identify other facts supporting that his forum preference should be given unusual weight,” Judge Sooknanan wrote.
As for the request to send the case to New York, the judge disagreed with Musk that potential judicial efficiency that would be gained by moving the case to where the class action is pending merited a forum change.
“[T]he court doubts that there is much ‘expertise’ to be gained in the class action that can be leveraged for efficiency in this case,” she wrote. “Although Mr. Musk has not yet indicated whether he disputes the SEC’s factual representations in this case, he has filed a motion to strike and dismiss, raising several constitutional arguments for dismissal and challenging the equitable relief sought by the SEC. … In sum, given that the legal issues in these cases do not yet seem to overlap … the court sees little efficiency to be gained through transfer.”
The SEC filed this lawsuit in January, alleging when Musk filed two reports late related to the purchase of Twitter stock, it constituted violations of Section 13(d) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 13d-1.
The SEC is represented by Melissa Armstrong, Zachary A. Avallone and Robin Andrews of the SEC.
Musk is represented by Alex Spiro, Rachel G. Frank and Sarah Concannon of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
The case number is 1:25-cv-00105.
Northern District of Texas
Court Enjoins American Airlines in ESG Investing Suit
Nearly nine months after finding American Airlines breached its “duty of loyalty” to retirement plan participants by “failing to loyally act solely in the retirement plan’s best financial interests,” U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor has barred the Fort Worth-based airline from allowing ESG goals to affect the management of 401(k) investments.
Judge O’Connor entered the permanent injunction Sept. 30, writing in part in the four-page order that American Airlines “shall not permit any proxy voting, shareholder proposals, or other stewardship activities on behalf of the plan that are motivated by or directed towards non-pecuniary ends, including but not limited to ESG-oriented investment management and objectives, that are not in the exclusive best financial interest of plan participants and beneficiaries.”
Bryan P. Spence, an American Airlines pilot from Aledo, Texas, was the lead plaintiff representing a class of more than 100,000 participants and beneficiaries of AA’s 401(k) plans. They alleged the airline was violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act in its pursuit of ESG goals when it gave plan assets to fund managers like BlackRock. Those fund managers, the suit alleges, “ignored financial returns as the exclusive purpose and lowered the value of plan participants’ investments.”
Judge O’Connor’s permanent injunction also bars the airline from using BlackRock or another asset manager that is also a significant shareholder from “managing plan assets without policies preventing those who maintain the corporate relationship with the asset manager from also being plan fiduciaries or playing a role in managing the plan.”
But American Airlines won’t have to pay any damages as a result of the breach, after Judge O’Connor also determined Spence and the rest of the class failed to tie any “compensable financial losses” to the breach.
American Airlines is represented by Russell D. Cawyer and Dee J. Kelly Jr. of Kelly Hart & Hallman and Shannon Barrett, Brian D. Boyle, Jeffrey A. N. Kopczynski, William Pollak, Charles Mahoney and Mark W. Robertson of O’Melveny & Myers.
The plaintiffs are represented by Andrew Stephens and Heather Hacker of Hacker Stephens and Isaac Diel, Hammons P. Hepner, Nathan A. Kakazu and Rex A. Sharp of Sharp Law.
The case number is 4:23-cv-00552.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Federal Fraud Case Against Social Media Influencers Revived
A three-judge panel has determined U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen got it wrong in March 2024 when he dismissed criminal fraud charges brought against eight social media influencers accused of orchestrating a “pump and dump” scheme in which they used their followers to increase the price of certain stocks and then sold them.
Judge Hanen had dismissed the indictment against Edward Constantinescu, Perry “PJ” Matlock, John Rybarczyk, Gary Deel, Stefan Hrvatin, Tom Cooperman, Mitchell Hennessey and Daniel Knight after finding that the government “failed to state an offense by merely alleging that defendants sought to deprive their followers of potentially valuable economic information instead of a traditional property interest.”
“Because we conclude that the indictment sufficiently alleges a scheme and intent to defraud, we reverse the district court’s dismissal of the indictment,” the appellate panel wrote in its seven-page opinion reviving the charges issued Oct. 2.
The court explained that while Judge Hanen rested his decision on the 2023 holding in Ciminelli v. United States, after he dismissed the indictment the U.S. Supreme Court in 2025 clarified in Kousisis v. United States “that an indictment alleging a fraudulent-inducement theory, as here, does not run afoul of Ciminelli.”
Judge Hanen had explained in his 12-page order that Ciminelli “limited the scope of the fraud statute by holding that, despite deceitful conduct involved, it does not cover fraudulent schemes whose object is to harm a victim’s right to have accurate information; only schemes that harm a victim’s traditional property right are actionable.”
“The most glaring issue in the indictment is the dearth of factual allegations that connect the alleged ‘scheme’ to the deprivation of the other investors’ traditional property interests (i.e., allegations demonstrating that the object of the scheme involved harm to victims.),” Judge Hanen wrote.
“These allegations adequately allege that obtaining financial gain was an object of the defendants’ scheme to defraud; obtaining financial gain, however, is only half of the equation,” Judge Hanen wrote. “It is the other half of the equation — harming a victim’s traditional property right — that is lacking.”
The appellate panel wrote that the indictment “sufficiently alleges defendants’ intent to defraud their followers.”
Judges Kurt D. Engelhardt, Don R. Willett and Stephen A. Higginson sat on the panel.
Constantinescu is represented by Matthew Ford of Ford O’Brien Landy. Matlock is represented by Luis Reyes, Johnny Sutton and Alexander Brown of Ashcroft Sutton. Rybarczyk is represented by Philip Hilder, Quentin Williams, Stephanie McGuire and James Rytting of Hilder & Associates. Deel is represented by Neal Davis of Houston. Hrvatin is represented by Carlos M. Fleites of Miami Beach, Florida. Cooperman is represented by Chip Lewis of Houston. Hennessey is represented by Laura M. Kidd Cordova and Michael Murtha of Jackson Walker. Knight is represented by Cordt Akers of Houston.
The federal government is represented by Andrew Laing, Anna Kalluri, Carmen Mitchell and Jeremy Sanders of the Department of Justice.
The case number is 24-20143.
Craving more Texas Lawbook litigation coverage? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Take a look at these stories you may have missed in the past few days.
The litigation trustee in the GWG Holdings bankruptcy dispute asked a federal judge to approve a $405,000 settlement with Jackson Walker related to the scandal involving former Houston Bankruptcy Judge David Jones. The GWG litigation trustee is the seventh party to reach a proposed settlement with Jackson Walker, which is accused of knowing about and failing to disclose a secret romantic relationship between one of its former bankruptcy partners, Elizabeth Freeman, and Judge Jones.
Word of that proposed settlement came days after the U.S. Trustee’s Office, referred to as the watchdog of the bankruptcy system, for the second time urged the presiding judge to reject proposed settlements the Dallas-based law firm has reached with its former bankruptcy clients. The Trustee has told the court to reject the proposed settlements and proceed with a full trial on the merits in the cases where it is seeking to claw back more than $10 million in legal fees.
In four separate filings, GWG bondholders spoke out forcefully against requests from Jackson Walker, Porter Hedges, David Jones and Elizabeth Freeman to dismiss racketeering claims against them, doubling down on allegations that each party was enriched by keeping secret a “live-in, intimate relationship” between then-bankruptcy judge Jones and bankruptcy lawyer Freeman. Across 182 pages, the fiery responses argued that Freeman had “corrupted the United States bankruptcy system for over five years and in more than two dozen cases,” that Jackson Walker “has a problem telling the truth,” that Jones engaged in years of “obfuscation and cover-up” and that Porter Hedges failed to present any “meritorious” arguments that dismissal is appropriate.
The two-week-long hearing in the bankruptcy case of Dr. Phil McGraw’s Merit Street Media concluded Monday afternoon. Counsel presented their closing arguments to the Northern District bankruptcy court on whether the case should be dismissed or converted to a Chapter 7. Northern District Judge Scott Everett heard five hours of closing arguments in the ongoing hearing over whether to dismiss Merit Street’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case or to convert it to a Chapter 7 proceeding.
A Jackson Walker partner in Austin successfully represented photographer Kirk Weddle in the lawsuit over whether his photograph of a naked baby that graced the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind album constituted child pornography. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted summary judgment Tuesday, dismissing the case with prejudice after finding the photo was “unequivocally non-sexual” and didn’t constitute child pornography as a matter of law.
The Lawbook reached out to all four chief federal judges in Texas, the U.S. attorneys for each district and leaders from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to ask how the federal government’s shutdown will impact operations.
A jury in Dallas County awarded $30 million in damages to a motorsports company in a dispute stemming from an agreement to sell golf carts. Coleman Powersports filed its lawsuit in January 2024, shortly after it lost business with Lowe’s, alleging SC Autosports broke the exclusivity agreement and went directly to the home improvement retailer to sell 900 golf carts.
A divided El Paso appellate court ruling ended a lawsuit alleging former participants in a soured land deal had manipulated the Mexican criminal justice system to have a businessman thrown in a Juarez prison and subsequently to extort a $2.1 million payment from him. The case turned on whether Texas or Mexico law applied to the issue of res judicata, which precludes parties from relitigating disputes once there’s been a final judgment on the merits. The Eighth Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 opinion, determined the trial court gets to decide which law applies and it was not incorrect in determining the litigation of a related suit in Juarez, Mexico, barred this one in El Paso under Texas law.