Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Dallas District Judge Dale Tillery on Friday ordered Toyota Motor Corp. to pay a Dallas family $213 million – the bulk of a $242 million jury verdict from August that found the automaker liable for a 2016 rear-end accident that left two small children with permanent brain damage. Toyota says it will ask for a new trial. The Lawbook has the details.
The Federal Trade Commission on Friday dismissed its remaining claims against DIRECTV in the middle of a bench trial that once had $4 billion at stake. The dismissal is the denouement to an opinion issued by a federal judge in California in August that arguably killed the case for the FTC.
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and USPTO Director Andrei Iancu spoke at the SMU Dedman School of Law Friday during its Tsai Leadership Lecture series. The Texas Lawbook's Natalie Posgate had the opportunity to sit down with Director Iancu for a few minutes after the program. Check here to find out what he said.
A San Marcos manufacturing client of K&L Gates filed a legal malpractice suit Tuesday, alleging that the firm represented their lenders against them in a debt dispute. The suit identifies two former K&L Gates lawyers in the conflict, one of them now a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
A Houston jury has awarded a take-nothing defense verdict to three brothers who were accused by two of their other siblings of fraud, securities violations and breach of fiduciary duty of their family business. The case involved money – approximately $30 million – but defense lawyers say the dispute, like many family court battles, went deeper.
It was a defense counsel's dream. After the plaintiffs rested, defense lawyers presented a motion for judgment as a matter of law to U.S. District Judge Samuel Ray Cummings in Lubbock. And he granted it. But that was only one odd turn in a trial – now blessed by the Fifth Circuit – during which procedure really, really mattered.
As any judge who has served on a trial court can attest, there are many assignments where the cases come at you so hard and fast that there is barely time to step into the box and take your stance before the next one comes zooming in. And that is true of the “easy” cases. This book is not about those.
The U.S. Senate has officially confirmed Dallas attorney Jeremy Kernodle as a judge in the Tyler division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, his law firm Haynes and Boone announced Friday. A qui tam and appellate expert, Kernodle fills the vacancy left by Michael H. Schneider, Sr., who retired from the bench in 2016.
American Airlines has filed a lawsuit against a travel company with a similar name alleging trademark infringement and a “flagrant and willful violation” of a previous settlement between the two parties, according to court documents filed last week.
What do you get when you combine an innovative and aggressive plaintiff’s bar with sloppy business practices, corner-cutting by contractors and failure to properly compensate day laborers? A thriving labor and employment law practice in the Lone Star state. New data obtained by The Texas Lawbook proves it.
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