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Businesses in Texas and across the U.S. continue to spend more and more money on legal fees to fight high-stakes litigation and to deal with a growing number of regulatory enforcement actions from state, local and federal government agencies, according to a new survey scheduled to be released Tuesday.
Norton Rose Fulbright’s 10th Annual Litigation Trends Survey found that 71 percent of corporations spent $1 million or more on litigation costs in 2013 – up from 53 percent the two previous years. More than 26 percent of companies saw their litigation costs exceed $10 million last year – an increase from 11 percent in 2011.
Also, Marsha Gerber and Richard Smith take an indepth look into survey results about an increasingly active regulatory environment, and William Wood discusses why energy companies are concerned about the jump in investigations and regulatory matters.

Regulatory/investigations are near the top of the list of litigation concerns for senior in-house counsel, and more time is being spent on government or regulatory investigations in company legal departments.

The Dallas Court of Appeals, in a case that exposes the influence of big money on local politics, has rejected a complex legal effort by real estate developer Henry Billingsley to shut down a residential air park community in Collin County so that he could turn the airport and its land into a shopping and office center.