Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Nominees for vacancies in the Western District of Texas would be among the first under the current administration. Sens. Cornyn and Cruz are on board with Ernest Gonzalez and Leon Schydlower for courts in Del Rio and El Paso. Former president Trump had a considerably larger impact as he addressed a backlog of vacant benches in Texas.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused a Fort Worth company of operating a $191 million Ponzi scheme involving the purchase and sale of cattle, and a trial team from Susman Godfrey secured an $86 million defense win. Also highlighted is a Fifth Circuit panel’s holding that the Federal Trade Commission used an incorrect standard in determining a $7.1 billion acquisition of a cancer test maker would harm competition, but the court also agreed with the agency’s conclusion, which was enough to prompt Illumina to announce it would divest Grail anyway.
The team, led by Jim Thompson, Nicholas Shum and Stephanie Noble had been defending Aera Energy against the claims lodged by business partners Vaquero Partners and Madison Energy for two years before the two-month trial began in October. The jurors deliberated for about a day and a half before determining Vaquero and Madison were entitled to no damages related to Aera’s operation of the Bakersfield-area oil and gas lease.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Dallas residents were granted a temporary injunction that will prohibit the city from enforcing new ordinances that would severely restrict the availability of short-term rental homes, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses the U.S. State Department of conspiring to censor conservative-leaning media outlets, and the Texas Supreme Court agrees to hear a case involving the scope of the Public Utility Commission of Texas’ authority.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Texas follows up on a Medicaid fraud lawsuit accusing Pfizer of manipulating data about the efficacy of a pediatric attention-deficit drug with a lawsuit accusing the pharmaceutical company of lying about the effectiveness of its Covid-19 vaccine, Antero Resources continues its fight to recover an $11.9 million judgment from a former manager and an intermediate appellate court finds a fatal products liability suit should be litigated in Dallas.
A five-judge panel that decides which Texas civil lawsuits should be consolidated in statewide multidistrict litigation has rejected a plea by lawyers representing data analytics firm CirclesX Recovery and other plaintiffs alleging a multibillion-dollar market manipulation conspiracy among natural gas companies during Winter Storm Uri to separate their lawsuits from hundreds of others. The decision means the case will remain a part of the MDL before a single Houston judge.
Tasked with implementing new laws creating a business court system for complex, expensive litigation, the Texas Supreme Court is gauging whether the state’s law schools might want to provide courtroom space. With 10 new trial courts and an intermediate appellate court coming online next September, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht discusses logistics and substantive issues the court is considering during its rulemaking process. Meanwhile, the chief justices for the 14 courts of appeals are identifying cases involving state government for likely transfer to the new Fifteenth COA, which will have exclusive jurisdiction over those cases and appeals from the business courts.
The Prompt Payment of Claims Act is a statute ostensibly enacted to provide enforcement mechanisms for Texas businesses, among others, and their lawyers in transactions between insurance companies and their policyholders. But significant changes in the potential penalties for failing to timely investigate and pay policy benefits have been favorable to foreign insurance companies and harmful to Texas businesses.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, the Austin appellate court rejects Texas’ bid to cut two qui tam whistleblowers out of their share of a $236 million settlement with Xerox, the Fifth Circuit finds Tesla’s uniform policy does not run afoul of the National Labor Relations Act and two Dallas pain doctors are indicted in a $12 million fraud scheme.
A new antitrust lawsuit filed in Texas names more than 30 real estate companies and associations across the state that home sellers QJ Team and Five Points Holdings allege have participated in a conspiracy developed by the National Association of Realtors that saddles home sellers with costs that should be borne by buyers. The proposed class action lawsuit alleges the practice results in inflated commissions and increased home prices. Last month in a similar lawsuit, a federal jury issued a $1.78 billion verdict to the sellers of about 260,000 homes in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois.
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