In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a federal judge in Fort Worth makes a business pitch to Apple and X Corp., a hefty sanction is upheld against two lawyers, and a pro se litigant is called out by a Fifth Circuit panel for citing cases that “appear to be fake” in her sex discrimination appeal.
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.
Northern District of Texas
X Lawsuit Against Apple, OpenAI Stays in Texas After Neither Defendant Requests Move
The lawsuit X Corp. filed against Apple and OpenAI, which accused the companies of being involved in a monopolistic scheme to dominate the global market for artificial intelligence, will remain in Texas after U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman on Thursday determined “that transfer of venue is inappropriate.”
Judge Pittman said even though the “case contains at best minimal connections” to the Northern District of Texas, part of his consideration was that neither Apple nor OpenAI had filed a motion to transfer the lawsuit that X filed in Fort Worth in August. He also noted Fifth Circuit precedent has raised the bar for transferring venue “to new heights.”
In the four-page order entered Thursday, the judge made a pitch to the companies.
“Given the present desire to have venue in Fort Worth, the numerous high-stakes lawsuits previously adjudicated in the Fort Worth Division, and the vitality of Fort Worth, the Court highly encourages the parties to consider moving their headquarters to Fort Worth,” Judge Pittman wrote. “Fort Worth has much more going for it than just the unique artwork on the fourth floor of its historic federal courthouse.”
In a footnote, Judge Pittman included the link to the city of Fort Worth website that the companies can visit to “get the process started” on moving headquarters to North Texas.
“And even though the choice of venue in Fort Worth is an unexpected choice, the Court nonetheless will permit this case to proceed in ‘The Unexpected City,’” the judge concluded, nodding to the city’s slogan.
X Corp. and X.AI are represented by Craig M. Reiser, Scott A. Eisman, Eva Yung, Christopher Erickson, Bradley Justus and Caroline P. Boisvert of Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider and Alex More, Monica E. Gaudioso and Robert C. Rowe of Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal.
Apple is represented by Dee. J. Kelly Jr. and Julia G. Wisenberg of Kelly Hart & Hallman and Emily Henn, Henry Liu, Lauren Zehmer and Carol Weiland of Covington & Burling.
OpenAI is represented by Michael K. Hurst, Chris W. Patton and Andy Kim of Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann and William Savitt, Kevin S. Schwartz and Stephen D. Levandoski of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Watz.
The case number is 4:25-cv-00914.
Eastern District of Texas
Whirlpool Accuses Samsung of Patent Infringement
Susman Godfrey is representing Whirlpool in a lawsuit accusing electronics giant Samsung of infringing two patents that cover technology used in its higher-end dishwashers sold under the KitchenAid brand.
In the 17-page lawsuit, Whirlpool explained its patents cover “enhanced-top rack technology” that allows utensils and silverware to be loaded horizontally on the top rack of the dishwasher and drinkware to be loaded at an angle on the top rack.
“Since its release in or around 2020, Whirlpool has annually sold approximately 1.6 million premium dishwashers with the enhanced top racks under the KitchenAid brand alone,” the lawsuit alleges. “The enhanced top racks have served as a major differentiator in the market for premium dishwasher segments.”
But in April 2025, Samsung released a competing dishwasher that Whirlpool alleges it “modeled after the KitchenAid technology that includes an infringing enhanced top rack that can hold both drinkware as well as silverware/utensils.”
For now, the allegedly infringing dishwashers from Samsung are being sold through its websites and the websites of Best Buy and Home Depot, but Whirlpool warned it believes “Samsung plans to release its accused products in brick-and-mortar stores and directly compete with Whirlpool’s dishwashers with these enhanced top racks,” which threatens floor space currently occupied by Whirlpool’s dishwashers.
The lawsuit was filed Oct. 10 and has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap. Whirlpool is seeking “past, present and future damages” to include enhanced damages based on Samsung’s alleged “willful and deliberate” infringement.
Whirlpool is represented by Joseph Grinstein, Kalpana Srinivasan, Jenna Farleigh and Y. Gloria Park of Susman Godfrey and Andrea L. Fair of Miller Fair Henry.
Counsel for Samsung had not filed an appearance as of Monday.
The case number is 2:25-cv-01042.
First Court of Appeals, Houston
$525K Sanction Against 2 Attorneys Upheld on Appeal
Two lawyers for a litigation management company who were sanctioned by a Harris County district judge for filing a lawsuit for an improper purpose lost a bid to duck a combined $525,000 sanction for their conduct.
A three-justice panel of the Houston appellate court on Thursday upheld the punishment that had been doled out in September 2023 to Michael D. Sydow (a $250,000 sanction), Chidi D. Anunobi (a $25,000 sanction) and their client, Iron Oak (a $250,000 sanction). Judge Elaine Palmer also ordered the attorneys to complete 10 hours of legal ethics education classes each year for the next five years.
In court filings, inventors John T. Preston and Michael E. Porter and their company Continuum Energy Technologies have told the court that Iron Oak and its principal, Rajiv Gosain, through the help of its attorneys Sydow and Anunobi, “are involved in a multi-year, nationwide effort to defraud them and the courts of at least three states.”
Judge Palmer found the Harris County lawsuit was filed for an improper purpose, namely, to secure a temporary restraining order that would have hit pause on an out-of-state lawsuit that was filed in an attempt to collect $15 million from Porter and Preston. The $15 million “confessed judgment” was issued by a court in New York for an alleged debt owed by Continuum to Iron Oak. That confessed judgment was originally domesticated in Massachusetts.
Iron Oak sought domestication and enforcement of that judgment in Harris County and eventually entered into a settlement and tolling agreement with Porter, Preston and Continuum for $10 million.
“Eventually, it came to light that the legal and factual underpinnings of Iron Oak’s allegations across the various jurisdictions and lawsuits were legally and factually flawed and Iron Oak’s various attempts to collect $10 million from Preston and Porter — nonjudgment debtors — began to unravel,” Judge Palmer wrote in findings of fact and conclusions of law she signed in September 2023.
The New York court that issued the award later vacated it on a motion from Preston and Continuum.
Judge Palmer held that the “factually impossible, legally deficient lawsuit” filed by Iron Oak was “for nothing but improper, bad faith motives.”
She wrote that the lawsuit’s purpose was “to prevent without valid basis progress in the Massachusetts lawsuit, thereby gaining a tactical advantage in that suit.” The Massachusetts lawsuit was brought by Porter and Continuum in an attempt to vacate the “confessed judgment” domesticated there.
Chief Justice Terry Adams and Justices Clint Morgan and Susanna Dokupil sat on the panel and wrote in the 30-page opinion that “there is at least some evidence to support the trial court’s finding that the TRO application was groundless because the appellants could not show they had a probable right of recovery in a trial on the merits,” and therefore the “trial court did not err in concluding that the appellants’ pleadings were groundless.”
Iron Oak is represented by Warren Taylor of Taylor, Taylor & Russell and Mark P. Yablon of Yablon Law.
Sydow is represented by Byron C. Keeling of Keeling & Frederickson.
Anunobi is represented by Derek U. Obialo of Houston.
The appellees are represented by Mark Trachtenberg of Haynes Boone, Jane Langdell Robinson and Shawn Bates of Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, Geoffrey Berg and Kathryn Nelson.
The case number is 01-23-00924-CV.
Fifteenth Court of Appeals, Austin
Yelp Must Face Texas’ DTPA Lawsuit
The state of Texas will get another chance to pursue its lawsuit accusing Yelp of violating a state law against deceptive trade practices after an appellate court last week determined the action had been wrongly tossed on jurisdictional grounds.
Texas accused Yelp of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act “by appending inaccurate and misleading language to listings on pregnancy resource centers appearing in the search results on Yelp’s app and website.”
The basis of the lawsuit is Yelp’s disclaimer on listings for “pregnancy resource centers” explaining to site visitors that the centers “typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”
Texas called the disclaimer misleading.
The panel held that while Texas failed to establish general jurisdiction, it had established specific jurisdiction exists in this suit.
“The state alleged that Yelp ‘violated Texas law’ by posting a false, misleading, and disparaging disclaimer on the Yelp business pages of every pregnancy center across the nation,” the opinion reads. “This allegation included crisis pregnancy centers in Texas because the state alleged that (1) the ‘transactions forming the basis of this suit occurred in Bastrop County, Texas’ and (2) Yelp ‘has done business in Bastrop County, Texas.’ These doing-business pleadings were sufficient to allege that Yelp is subject to specific jurisdiction under Texas’s long-arm statute.”
The Thursday opinion from the panel undoes a February 2024 ruling from Bastrop County District Judge Reva Towslee-Corbett, who dismissed the case with prejudice after agreeing Bastrop County courts didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the dispute and granted Yelp’s special appearance.
The dismissal of Texas’ Bastrop County suit came about one month after U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in the Northern District of California denied Yelp’s request for an injunction that would bar Attorney General Ken Paxton from “taking any further action to penalize Yelp’s publication of truthful speech about crisis pregnancy centers, including the statement that CPCs ‘typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.’”
Justice April Farris authored the court’s 24-page opinion, joined by Chief Justice Scott Brister and Justice Scott Field.
Texas is represented by Abigail E. Smith, Rob Farquharson and Scott Froman of the attorney general’s office.
Yelp is represented by Laura Lee Prather, Catherine Robb, Michael J. Lambert and William Reid Pillifant of Haynes Boone
The case number is 15-24-00040-CV.
Texas Supreme Court
Dallas Files Opening Brief in Short-Term Rental Ban Case
On Thursday, the city of Dallas filed a petition for review with the Texas Supreme Court, asking the court to act quickly to review its request to enforce two ordinances regulating short-term rentals, noting “the world will soon converge upon Dallas for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.”
“STR’s will be in high demand,” the city argued. “And with the ordinances erroneously enjoined, it will be more difficult for the city to proactively ensure the health, safety and quality of life for residents and visitors alike.”
The appeal to the state’s high court comes after the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas in July determined that its original February ruling upholding an injunction barring the city of Dallas from enforcing certain short-term rental ordinances should largely stay in place.
While litigation between the Dallas Short-Term Rental Alliance and the city proceeds over the ordinances that would ban about 95 percent of short-term rentals in the city limits, specifically those in “single-family residential” areas, the temporary injunction will stay in place.
The court did amend its earlier ruling in one notable way, agreeing with Dallas that one of the four individual plaintiffs bringing the constitutional challenge is not entitled to injunctive relief because she runs a business providing cleaning and maintenance services to those who operate rental properties.
“We assume without deciding this constitutes an occupational property interest,” the panel wrote. “To be constitutionally protected, a property interest must be ‘vested.’ Interests are not vested when they are predicated upon the anticipated continuance of an existing law and subordinate to the Legislature’s right to change the law and abolish the interest.”
When Dallas County District Judge Monica Purdy entered the injunction, she wrote that she was unpersuaded by a study the city claimed it relied on in passing the restrictions.
On appeal, Dallas told the Texas Supreme Court that it enacted the two ordinances at issue in this suit after a “three-year legislative process,” where it listened to residents’ concerns about short-term rentals, including “excessive noise, overcrowding, trash, lack of parking, street congestion and illegal drug use.”
Dallas is represented by Tammy L. Palomino, Nicholas D. Palmer and Andrew G. Spaniol of the city attorney’s office and William Chase Medling and Joe Greenhill of Kelly Hart & Hallman.
The Dallas Short-Term Rental Alliance is represented by Michael K. Hurst and David Coale of Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann.
The case number is 25-0748.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Panel Says Pro Se Litigant Cited Cases that ‘Appear to be Fake’
A former employee of the fire department in Shreveport, Louisiana, lost a bid to revive her claims of race and sex discrimination.
Felicia Scroggins had filed suit after receiving a right to sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission based on her claims that she was wrongly passed over for a promotion based on her race and sex.
On appeal, she argued that the district court judge granted summary judgment in favor of the city before she had a chance to find substitute counsel. But the Fifth Circuit panel determined 2-1 that Scroggins failed to cite any relevant authority in support of that argument.
“In fact, of the ten cases Scroggins cites, four appear to be fake,” the majority wrote, and “three actual cases do not say what Scroggins claims.”
Judges Jerry E. Smith, James L. Dennis and Priscilla Richman sat on the panel that issued the Friday opinion. Judge Dennis authored a dissent that in his view, because the case “is chock-full of fact disputes,” he would reverse the summary judgment ruling against Scroggins.
“The majority declines to do so, reasoning that Scroggins forfeited her arguments through inadequate briefing,” he wrote. “But Scroggins is a litigant proceeding pro se, and we must read her filings liberally.”
Shreveport is represented by Joseph S. Woodley and Marshall Perkins of Pettiette, Armand, Dunkelman, Woodley & Cromwell.
Scroggins represents herself.
The case number is 24-30777.
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