Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Bankruptcy lawyers and judges have been pushing Congress for three years to raise the debt limit for Subchapter V bankruptcy reorganization from $3.4 million to $7.5 million. They argued such a move would help small business owners restructure their debt faster and cheaper than the standard Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcy filing.
The Texas Lawbook spoke with four business restructuring experts about the recent passage by Congress of the Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment Act.
Fresh off their third trial defense win in a row in the Eastern District of Texas, Nicholas Mathews and Erik Fountain are transferring their intellectual property litigation talents to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. They are the latest in a string of partner losses at McKool Smith this summer.
In this September edition of White-Collar & Regulatory Roundup, federal prosecutors say David Gilchrist ran a property tax-lien investment scheme that collected $1.45 million from roughly 20 investors, then forged notary deeds to mislead SEC investigators and urged a potential witness to leave the country. Gilchrist, a licensed Texas attorney since 1983, faces wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and witness tampering charges, plus a parallel SEC civil suit.
Congress has passed legislation raising the debt limit for Subchapter V bankruptcy reorganization from $3.4 million to $7.5 million, offering small business owners a faster, more affordable alternative to standard Chapter 11. Co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn and praised by state bankruptcy judges, the Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment Act awaits the president’s signature.
He still has an active law practice, but Mike McKool’s legal work doesn’t lend itself to spending time in the courtroom these days. When he’s not working, he told The Texas Lawbook in a recent interview, he’s spent his time visiting with friends and driving offroad motorcycles on 40 miles of trails around his ranch near Waxahachie.
A Texas Business Court judge has determined the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association failed to sufficiently connect the dots between The Boeing Company’s alleged misrepresentations about the airworthiness of the 737 MAX aircraft, the subsequent grounding of those planes following two fatal crashes, and the consequential damages the union alleged its members suffered as a result.
After a decade of serving her country as the first regional director of the Southwest Office for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Hope Shimabuku jumped at the opportunity to again create something new when she led the opening of Finnegan’s Dallas office this month. And the elite global IP firm would’ve been hard-pressed to find someone better to be boots on the ground. The Texas Lawbook visited with Shimabuku about her legacy at the USPTO and her aspirations for Finnegan in Texas.
As millions of barrels of oilfield wastewater flood into Texas from New Mexico daily, shrinking underground disposal capacity in the Permian Basin threatens to constrain future energy production. Levying a severance-style tax on out-of-state produced water would generate over $100 million annually, protect Texas operators and spur vital investment in water recycling infrastructure.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Texas State Securities Board says it was the entity that determined NFL star Travis Kelce was the victim of a Ponzi scheme, a dispute between concrete industry competitors is dropped and the Texas Supreme Court is urged to determine courts here have jurisdiction over a $500 million fight between Brazilian mining companies.
Tim Wells, who started his legal career at Brown Fox in 2022, is the fourth former federal law clerk at the 28-lawyer firm. “Fort Worth has been on our minds for many years. Tim’s return gives us a chance to anchor the new office with a talented Tarrant County attorney, a member of the Fort Worth community, and a litigator fresh off working in the Northern District’s Fort Worth Division,” Brown Fox Managing Partner Russ Brown said.
© Copyright 2026 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.