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Holland & Knight Files Motion to Dismiss GWG Trustee’s Fraud Suit - This week, the law firm Holland & Knight and its partner Bill Banowsky asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur to dismiss a bankruptcy trustee’s fraud lawsuit against them for failure to state a claim. Holland & Knight and Banowsky argued the trustee had obscured “the facts upon which it must rely for wrongdoing against defendants in this case.” June 4, 2025
V&E, Susman Godfrey Alums Launch Litigation Finance Firm - Lauren Harrison and Mani Walia have clerked for federal appellate judges, practiced at premier law firms and done pioneering work in the world of litigation funding. This week, the duo launched Signal Peak Partners, a Houston-based investment firm that customizes litigation financing, private credit solutions and monetization options for plaintiffs and their lawyers. June 3, 2025
Diamondback/Viper to Acquire Sitio Royalties for $4.1B - The deal adds more than 25,000 royalty acres to Diamondback's Permian inventory and cuts Viper's dividend breakeven to under $20 per barrel WTI. Wachtell, Vinson & Elkins and Gibson Dunn advised on the deal. June 3, 2025
Legislature Revives 25% Judicial Pay Hike After Frantic Negotiations - A longstanding statutory link between judicial pay and legislative pensions almost derailed a bill to increase district court judges’ salaries. Last-minute negotiations between the House and Senate led to an agreement to end the link by 2030. (File photo of Texas House Rep. Jeff Leach by Tony Gutierrez/AP) June 3, 2025
Legendary Trial Lawyer H. Lee Godfrey Dies - In an announcement, the firm said he died following a long illness. In 1982, Godfrey joined his friend, Steve Susman, who launched his own firm two years earlier. Together, the pair built Susman Godfrey into a preeminent, commercial litigation boutique with a reputation for taking big cases on a contingency basis. June 2, 2025CDT Roundup: Another Week for the $20B Streak, Unusual Deals and a SPAC Twist - The week ending May 31 saw 19 deals reported involving Texas businesses or Texas lawyers. They were valued at $23.4 billion, representing the fourth week in a row reporting transactions valued at a total of $20 billion or more. Last week, we saw 15 deals for $24 billion. And this time last year, there were 12 transactions for $34 billion. And it was a week that was more than usually unusual. June 2, 2025
Centerpiece
Legislation Aims to Boost Texas as a Friendly Place to Incorporate and Settle Disputes - A new law makes it more difficult for shareholders to challenge corporate decisions through litigation. A second bill headed to the governor’s desk would enhance the fledgling Texas Business Court’s authority, although lawmakers decided for now against expanding the system to rural Texas. (Photo by Ricardo Garza) June 4, 2025
Report: Judge Gilstrap Again the King of Patent Litigation - Patent infringement litigation has mostly been on the decline across the U.S. for the past three years, but not in the Eastern District of Texas, which has re-established its courts as the preferred destination for disputes regarding patent infringement. A new report by legal analytics firm Lex Machina shows that U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap of Marshall was assigned 795 new patent lawsuits in 2024 — six times more than any other federal judge in the U.S. June 3, 2025Expert Voices
What Two Former Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office Heads Want Business Leaders to Know About DOJ Corporate Enforcement in 2025 - The C-suite crowd seems to be letting out a collective sigh of relief at the dawn of a perceived era of decreased enforcement, while compliance officers worry aloud about their businesses moving resources to other parts of the company and letting up on their carefully cultivated “cultures of compliance.” We read the room differently, and we thought it important to share seven reasons why there has never been a more important time to keep your compliance frameworks in place and, if possible, provide even more resources to them. June 2, 2025
Defamed by a Llama — Legal Consequences of AI-Generated Falsehoods - There are many ways to be defamed: verbal rumors, print news stories, television news stories and social media posts, just to name a few. But now — based on a newly filed lawsuit against Meta for its “Llama” AI program — we have to add “defamation by artificial intelligence” to our lexicon. May 29, 2025
