Sonida Selects a New GC: Tabitha Bailey
Dallas-based Sonida Senior Living Corporation has hired former Avantax General Counsel Tabitha Bailey as its new chief legal officer starting Jan. 1.
P.S. — ACC San Antonio, Texas Lawbook Announce Partnership, Honor Christine Reinhard and Vincent Johnson for Ethics, Leadership
The Texas Lawbook and the Association of Corporate Counsel’s San Antonio Chapter have agreed to a new media content partnership similar to partnerships The Lawbook has with ACC chapters in DFW and Houston. And as part of the partnership, ACC San Antonio has announced that it is honoring St. Mary’s University School of Law professor Vincent R. Johnson and San Antonio labor and employment lawyer Christine Reinhard with the 2024 Lee Cusenbary Ethical Life and Leadership Award. This week’s P.S. column also highlights the new leadership of the Houston Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, led by chapter president and Pattern Energy Senior Counsel Lauren Haller.
Match Names former Twitter GC as CLO
Dallas-based Match Group has named former Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett as its new chief legal officer replacing Jared Sine, who resigned earlier this year to become CLO at GoDaddy.
Heidelberg Materials North America Names Shonn Brown as GC
Global building materials manufacturer Heidelberg Materials has announced that Kimberly-Clark deputy general counsel Shonn Brown is joining Heidelberg as general counsel and chief compliance officer for its Irving-based North America operations.
Travis Torrence’s Road to U.S. Head of Legal for Shell USA
Travis Torrence is the great-great-grandson of slaves who worked on plantations along the River Road in Louisiana — a swath of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — just footsteps away from a Shell USA refinery in Convent and just miles away from Shell’s petrochemical plant in Norco. He is the great-grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers. His dad was a truck driver and his mother was a public high school teacher. Three months ago, London-based energy giant Shell named Torrence as its head of legal for its U.S. operations and associate general counsel over global litigation — the first Black person to hold the position.
“My story and my family’s history are not lost on me,” Torrence told The Texas Lawbook in an interview. In this story, Torrence talks family, his days at Shell and the attributes of the outside counsel he seeks to hire.
Power Struggle Underway in AT&T Data Breach MDL
In early June, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred to U.S. District Judge Ada Brown a group of proposed class action lawsuits brought by dozens of lawyers over the AT&T data breach. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs — who are among the 73 million current and former customers who had their personal information released on the dark web — are already jockeying for leadership positions in the sprawling litigation.
Exxon Mobil Names Former Fox Lawyer as New GC
Following its pattern of promoting former top federal prosecutors and regulators to leading corporate positions, Exxon Mobil announced Wednesday that former Fox Corporation general counsel and former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeff Taylor, will be the energy giant’s next top lawyer. Exxon Mobil announced Wednesday that Craig Morford, also a former federal prosecutor who has been the company’s general counsel since 2020, will retire on July 1 and that Taylor will be his replacement.
Houston Corporate Counsel Award Winners: Phillips 66, LyondellBasell, First Reserve, McDermott, Cardinal Systems
More than 220 corporate in-house counsel and their outside lawyers gathered last week at the Four Seasons in downtown Houston to recognize more than two-dozen general counsel and senior in-house counsel who achieved extraordinary success during the past year.
Shell’s Hector Pineda: A ‘Change Agent’ for DEI
Hector Pineda is kind of a big deal at Shell. Throughout his nearly three-decade career at one of the world’s largest oil companies, he’s gone from battling a snake wrangler in a West Texas courtroom to handling major projects and commercial transactions to providing strategic advice to top executives and managers leading Shell’s downstream and renewables businesses in the Americas. But no matter how high he climbs in the company, it is his ability to advance others and be a microphone for diverse voices that he is most proud of.
Pineda is one of three finalists for the 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Diversity and Inclusion, and the winner will be revealed Wednesday at an awards ceremony hosted by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.
SilverBow Resources’ Asst. GC Jennifer Cadena Knows How to Win ‘The Litigation Chess Game’
One month before the Texas Supreme Court revived a novel lawsuit SilverBow Resources Operating lodged against Energy Transfer alleging it had interfered with its drilling rights via underground contamination linked to an injection well, Jennifer Cadena was promoted to become the company’s assistant general counsel and senior land manager after three years as senior exploration and production counsel.
She worked alongside outside counsel at Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing to ensure when the McMullen County jury finally got to hear the case, they would agree SilverBow was entitled to damages from Energy Transfer.
When the jury awarded SilverBow $24.5 million in damages in February 2023, it was a hard-fought result eight years in the making.