Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has named Dallas lawyer David Woodcock as its new director of enforcement, overseeing the agency’s federal civil corporate securities and fraud investigations and prosecutions.
Woodcock is taking a multimillion-dollar pay cut by leaving Gibson Dunn, where he has been a partner in Dallas since 2023.
Omar Samji, the Houston-based lawyer whose career in power and renewables spans more than two decades and six law firms, has left Weil for Gibson Dunn, the firm is announcing today.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook announced more recipients of 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards. General counsel and senior in-house counsel from six of the world’s largest corporate energy and chemical giants, a handful of thriving midsized energy industry operators and the top lawyer for Houston Rockets owner and entertainment billionaire Tilman Fertitta have been named.
During the next week, ACC Houston and The Lawbook will unveil the 2026 award winners in 17 different categories.
Have you ever worked with someone or a group of people and everything was just easy?
But have you also experienced the opposite, where nothing seemed clear?
In both scenarios, the difference was trust.
A group of 13 shareholders of biopharmaceutical tech company Sorrento Therapeutics allege in a new lawsuit that Dallas-based Jackson Walker’s decision to file its bankruptcy case in the Southern District of Texas was done to enrich the firm at the expense of the shareholders.
Another two Dallas partners have joined their former Winston & Strawn colleagues at King & Spalding. Jeff Cole and Brian Jansen were named partners in the finance and restructuring practice group.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a San Antonio-based Jackson Walker partner is tapped to represent a man in a $37 million bid-rigging conspiracy case in Hawaii, and Camp Mystic asks a Travis County district judge to send litigation over the fatal July 4 flood to arbitration.
Stonewall Gas Gathering, a West Virginia pipeline owner, has been ordered to pay $1 in a breach of contract case before the Texas Business Court. Antero Resources claimed it had suffered $200 million in damages from the alleged breach.
The Texas Business Court in Dallas trimmed the claims for trial by granting summary judgment for the Mavericks, finding the Stars didn’t comply with the “location commitment” in the parties’ contract when the team moved its headquarters to Frisco in 2003. There will be a hearing Tuesday morning to determine where the jury trial will take place next month.
March finds the court firing on all cylinders, producing an increasingly large (and increasingly diverse) output of opinions covering a wide range of issues at nearly every stage of the litigation life cycle — from remand fights to temporary injunction battles and from jurisdictional disputes to yet another trial verdict (this time from a bench trial).
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