A $400 million insurance recovery action filed by Samsung Austin Semiconductor is shining a light on the playbook that insurance companies rely upon to create an unfair advantage in claim disputes. While the damages in this case are eye-popping, the allegations in the lawsuit paint a picture that is all too familiar for businesses and property owners across the state.
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Ovintiv Exits Bakken for Permian in Tandem Deals with EnCap Totaling $5.1B
Gibson Dunn, Kirkland & Ellis and Vinson & Elkins counseled the various parties in the pair of agreements with a total of 70 Texas lawyers in the mix. The deal includes what Ovintiv describes as “a unique undeveloped asset” involving “some of the best rock” in the Northern Midland Basin of the Permian.
SCOTX Greenlights Degree Revocation by Public Universities
The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the consolidated cases in September where two former students argued their alma maters had denied due process and acted outside the scope of their authority in rescinding their doctorate degrees years after graduation. The majority of the Texas Supreme Court held that despite scant precedent, the law allows universities to take that action regardless of when the alleged academic misconduct underpinning the decision is discovered.
P.S. — A Silent Auction, A Screening Event, A Pair of Young DEI Leaders
In this week’s edition of P.S., Natalie Posgate details information on a special screening highlighting pro bono work by a large law firm with Syrian refugees that will support earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria, an upcoming silent auction benefitting a nonprofit treatment center for women in Dallas struggling with substance abuse and a Houston firm’s selection of two associates to participate in a prestigious diversity leadership development program.
Celanese GC Lynne Puckett Led DFW’s 2022 M&A Transaction of the Year
As a CIA intelligence officer focusing on Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lynne Puckett “got a ringside seat to the dissolution of Eastern Europe as communist-controlled in 1989. It was also when she realized she wanted to go to law school.
Three decades later, Puckett is the general counsel of Celanese Corporation, an Irving-based global chemical and specialty materials company with a market cap of $12 billion. In November 2022, Puckett and her legal team closed an $11 billion acquisition of a majority ownership in DuPont’s mobility and materials business.
Citing the deal’s extraordinary complexity, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook named Puckett, her in-house legal team at Celanese and outside counsel at Baker Botts as the recipient of the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for M&A Transaction of the Year.
Q&A: Lynne Puckett of Celanese
The Lawbook visited with the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel M&A Transaction of the Year Award winner about what she looks for in outside counsel, hourly rates, pro bono and diversity.
Harris Co. Attorney Christian Menefee at ‘The Perfect Intersection of Law and Policy’
As a third-year associate at Norton Rose Fulbright, Christian Menefee attended an election night watch party in November 2016 that ended in a way no one in attendance expected. But it also was the night that changed his life and career path. Exactly four years later, Menefee became the youngest lawyer and the first African American to be elected county attorney of Harris County. In an interview with The Texas Lawbook, Menefee discusses his first two years as Harris County’s top legal officer, the current Texas legislative session, how he hires outside counsel and his plans for reelection. Photo credit: Marie D. De Jesús/Houston Chronicle
Lauren Brogdon: A Crisis Manager and Survivor Helping Other Survivors
Lauren Brogdon is adept at putting out fires. At her day job in Haynes and Boone’s Houston office, Brogdon specializes in energy litigation and serves as chair of Haynes and Boone’s crisis management practice group. In her free time, she helps put out other fires ignited by the wrath of domestic violence. She works with domestic violence victims through her pro bono work with Houston Volunteer Lawyers, the Houston Area Women’s Center and AVDA.
But something many billable and pro bono clients alike may not know about Brogdon is that she is a domestic violence survivor herself. Natalie Posgate recently talked with Brogdon about her pro bono work, her own experience and how it shaped her into the lawyer she is today.
Lawmakers Advance 15th Court of Appeals Bill
In the face of varied and robust opposition to the proposal to create a new, statewide appellate court with exclusive jurisdiction over disputes involving the state or a state agency, lawmakers last week voted to send the bill to the full senate for a vote. Texas for Lawsuit Reform has championed the bill as an opportunity to establish a court with specialized expertise to hear matters of statewide importance.
CDT Roundup: 15 Deals, 10 Firms, 141 Lawyers, $8.8B
Inflation results in more than high prices for tomatoes and toilet paper. After nearly a decade in which the price of money hovered near zero, persistent inflation has apparently hammered down the appetite for M&A from private equity, dropping global M&A by 48 percent and global private equity deals by 57 percent — 46 percent in the U.S. Claire Poole analyzes reasons for the current drought in this week’s Corporate Deal Tracker Roundup, along with the names of the lawyers who fought the headwinds against last week’s deals.