The announcement of his move to the firm’s Austin office came Monday, the day his retirement from the Western District of Texas became official. He served on the federal bench for more than 20 years.
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Legislature Enters Final Month
Debate is expected Monday on HB 19, controversial legislation to create a separate system of courts to hear high-dollar business disputes. The bill has emerged as a partisan issue, laments Mark Lanier, a high-profile trial lawyer and Republican donor who opposes the proposal. In other, less contentious, action, the House has voted to increase juror pay and raise the mandatory retirement age for judges.
Q&A: Sarah Menendez, BMC Software
For Premium Subscribers BMC Software GC Pat Tagtow and his senior counsel, Sarah Menendez, spent five years litigating and two weeks at trial claiming that competitor but sometimes business partner
Q&A: Patrick Tagtow, BMC Software
For Premium Subscribers BMC Software GC Pat Tagtow and his senior counsel, Sarah Menendez, spent five years litigating and two weeks at trial claiming that competitor but sometimes business partner
BMC Legal Team Needed ‘Sheer Tenacity, Strategy and Endurance’ to Win $1.6B Award
BMC Software GC Pat Tagtow and his senior counsel, Sarah Menendez, spent five years litigating and two weeks at trial claiming that competitor but sometimes business partner IBM made a “material misrepresentation” and acted in “bad faith” during contract negotiations when it agreed to not displace BMC’s products from AT&T’s mainframe systems but did so anyway. There were 52 depositions, 17 expert reports, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents produced as evidence and more than 950 court docket entries.
But last Memorial Day, Tagtow, Menendez and lead trial lawyer Sean Gorman spent all day checking phone messages and emails every 30 minutes and refreshing PACER to see if the judge had issued his verdict. A billion dollars was at stake. Finally, just as the Menendezes sat down to a dinner of buttermilk brined baked chicken, biscuits and slaw, the decision arrived. This is the story behind the three people who led the litigation and why it is a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
P.S. — A Fundraising Update, A New HVL Exec Director, A Donation Shoutout
This week’s P.S. column features fundraising updates on two recent events — one that took place in Austin this week and one that recently happened over the interweb — as well as information on Houston Volunteer Lawyers’ new executive director and a special thank-you to a group of Texas Lawbook Foundation donors.
Sen. Schumer Asks NDTX Chief Judge to Revise Case Assignment Methods
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer sent the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas a letter Thursday asking that he “reform the method of assigning cases” to judges to put an end to forum shopping by litigants. The senator said litigants — especially the Texas Attorney General — have abused NDTX procedures that automatically assign cases to judges who sit in those geographic divisions, including divisions that have only one or two federal judges, in order to “hand-pick individual district judges seen as particularly sympathetic to their claims.”
How to Thrive as a Summer Associate
Whether you are embarking on a summer associate position at a firm, a summer clerkship at the courthouse or an internship at a legal aid clinic, there are three universal truths that can make or break the summer.
Dallas Jury Awards $860M in Wrongful Death Case Involving Crane Collapse
A Dallas County jury on Wednesday awarded more than $860 million to the parents of a woman killed in 2019 when a 200-foot steel crane toppled onto her apartment building from an adjacent construction site. The verdict exceeded the $700 million sought by plaintiff’s lawyers from Arnold & Itkin.
Group of Plaintiff Lawyers, Most from Texas, Throw Support Behind $8.9B J&J Plan
An ad hoc committee of lawyers who represent about 55,000 talc claimants alleging Johnson & Johnson products caused their cancer have told a bankruptcy judge in New Jersey that they support the company’s plan to establish an $8.9 billion trust to pay out the claims. Many well-known plaintiffs firms from Texas have joined the committee, but one has stayed quiet: Mark Lanier.