Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
An East Texas jury ruled Wednesday that Samsung Electronics violated the patented technology of rival Maxell Ltd. and awarded the plaintiff $111.7 million in damages. Japan-based Maxell sued Samsung, which is headquartered in South Korea, in 2023 alleging it willfully infringed on three patents related to its technology on smart phone and home devices, including appliances.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the federal government wades into an antitrust lawsuit Texas launched against a trio of asset managers alleging coal market manipulation, and the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas hears oral arguments in a $19.7 million loan dispute between former partners in a real estate firm.
The Dallas-based airline has agreed to pay one cent in damages and a confidential amount in attorney fees and court costs to resolve a lawsuit brought by political conservative Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights over its now-terminated flight program for low-income Hispanic students.
A curious housekeeper who noticed Kim Bueno lugging weeks’ worth of outfits into her hotel room initiated a conversation with the trial attorney. The housekeeper asked Bueno about her trial. The former King & Spalding partner, who on Monday joined Kirkland & Ellis, explained that she defended a drug manufacturer against a lawsuit alleging its product was harmful. The housekeeper drilled in on three questions that prompted Bueno to rework her opening statement and to incorporate a standing ritual into her trial preparation.
Recently, trial teams from Gibbs & Bruns convinced two Harris County juries to return complete defense wins for two of its clients, one that was facing as much as $13.7 million in liability and another that was fighting claims seeking more than $20 million in damages.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we detail two recent Texas Supreme Court rulings defining the contours of the Texas Citizens Participation Act, the whole Fifth Circuit unites to overturn a 45-year-old binding precedent in a lawsuit between a Houston plaintiffs firm and a former associate, and in another Fifth Circuit ruling, a panel upholds a $26.5 million award for a man injured in a collision with a letter carrier, writing that it wouldn’t “manufacture inequity, uncertainty, and arbitrariness” by adopting arguments presented by the Department of Justice in that case.
A little more than a week after Google and Texas told the state’s supreme court they were in settlement negotiations that could end litigation in a consumer protection lawsuit, Texas on Friday afternoon announced a $1.375 billion settlement with the tech giant. Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a statement calling the settlement of the state Deceptive Trade Practices Act claims “a major win for Texans’ privacy” and said it “tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
It took a jury in Harris County about seven hours of deliberations over Thursday and Friday to determine Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root owed nothing to a Mexican construction company that had been seeking more than $100 million in damages over losing a bid to build a refinery in southern Mexico.
A lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge Thursday that President Donald Trump was legally exercising his executive authority by prohibiting lawyers with the Houston-based law firm Susman Godfrey from entering federal buildings or representing clients who had contracts with the federal government and suspending their security clearances. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan of Washington, D.C., repeatedly asked U.S. Deputy Associate Attorney General Richard Lawson to provide evidence supporting the president’s April 9 executive order condemning Susman Godfrey for racial discrimination in their hiring practices and for “spearheading efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrading the quality of American elections.”
Federal jurors in Houston on Monday afternoon sided with Marathon Oil in a lawsuit stemming from the delivery of natural gas during February 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, rejecting a $123.7 million breach of contract claim lodged by Koch Energy Services.
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