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SDTX Bankruptcy Judge Jones Seeks Dismissal of Romance-Related Lawsuit

A lawsuit against former Houston Bankruptcy Judge David Jones claiming that he conspired with lawyers at corporate law firms should be dismissed because “well-established judicial immunity doctrine … provides absolute immunity from suits for damages” for judges, lawyers for Judge Jones argued in court documents filed Thursday.

“This immunity applies even when the judge is accused of acting maliciously and corruptly, and the immunity extends to allegations of intentional misconduct,” David Boies, lawyer for Judge Jones, wrote in the motion to dismiss.

July 11, 2024 Mark Curriden

Judge Tosses Breach of Contract Suit Against Fort Worth Oil and Gas Company

State District Judge Megan Fahey granted summary judgment to Fort Worth-based Tug Hill Inc. in a lawsuit brought by a former executive. The ex-exec argued a verbal agreement was reached with the company’s president that entitled him to management incentive units that should have been paid out to him in an amount over $10 million.

July 10, 2024 Krista Torralva

Enagás Exits Tallgrass in $1.1B Deal with Blackstone

The deal follows Blackstone’s purchase last month of Phillips 66’s interest in REX, and further consolidates Blackstone control of more than 7,000 miles of midwest oil and gas pipeline.

July 10, 2024 Allen Pusey

CDT Roundup: 11 Deals, 11 Firms, 95 Lawyers, $3.9B

Deals are deals, unless they turn out not to be. The proposed $4 billion acquisition of Houston-based Mattress Firm by rival Tempur Sealy seemed like a deal. But the Federal Trade Commission last week voted 5-0 to stop the negotiations and sought to do so in a Houston federal court. The FTC complaint contains the usual language about protecting the U.S. consumer, but it also features allegations of retail bullying by Tempur Sealy along with 182-redactions to back that up. A discussion of that, and the usual fare of Texas-related deal summaries and the firms and lawyers involved, is in this week’s CDT Roundup.

July 10, 2024 Claire Poole & Allen Pusey

On Winter Storm Uri, the Texas Supreme Court and the Public Utilities Commission’s Power to Address Statewide Emergencies

Earlier this summer, the Texas Supreme Court decided two highly publicized, high-stakes cases arising out of Winter Storm Uri. The upshot of Luminant and RWE appear three-fold for the Texas electricity industry.

July 10, 2024 Diana Liebmann & Ryan Pitts

Litigation Roundup: Injunctions Against Federal Agencies Mount

In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we look at the lawyers who helped secure recent rulings barring the federal government from regulating horseracing and from enforcing bans on both noncompete agreements and LNG export approvals.

July 9, 2024 Michelle Casady

Bracewell Adds Top Energy Partner Michelle Boudreaux

Bracewell has added an experienced partner to its energy regulatory group. Michelle Boudreaux, previously a partner in the energy projects and transactions group at Baker Botts, has joined Bracewell’s Houston office.

July 9, 2024 Jeff Schnick

Devon Energy Acquires EnCap Bakken Assets for $5B

Kirkland & Ellis and Vinson & Elkins advised on the upstream/midstream deal which includes more than 300,000 acres and a 950-mile gathering system. It marks the third major upstream transaction by Houston-based EnCap Investments in the past month.

July 8, 2024 Allen Pusey

Texas Lawbook Hires Jeff Schnick as Editor

The Texas Lawbook has hired longtime business journalist and editor Jeff Schnick as its new editor. Schnick, 45, is the former editor of the Dallas Business Journal and a former assistant business editor at The Dallas Morning News. He will oversee a news team of nine reporters who cover business litigation and trials, corporate mergers, acquisitions and capital markets, law firm management and business bankruptcies.

“We’re working persistently to make our news product more comprehensive across all our coverage areas, as well as to ensure that our premium subscribers are offered more exclusive data and stories,” Schnick said in a Q&A, where he discusses his background, his passion for newspapers and his plans for enhancing Lawbook content.

July 8, 2024 Mark Curriden

Travis Torrence’s Road to U.S. Head of Legal for Shell USA

Travis Torrence is the great-great-grandson of slaves who worked on plantations along the River Road in Louisiana — a swath of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — just footsteps away from a Shell USA refinery in Convent and just miles away from Shell’s petrochemical plant in Norco. He is the great-grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers. His dad was a truck driver and his mother was a public high school teacher. Three months ago, London-based energy giant Shell named Torrence as its head of legal for its U.S. operations and associate general counsel over global litigation — the first Black person to hold the position.

“My story and my family’s history are not lost on me,” Torrence told The Texas Lawbook in an interview. In this story, Torrence talks family, his days at Shell and the attributes of the outside counsel he seeks to hire.