Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Lawyers in the Lone Star State celebrated the holiday week by working on deals involving the heavy stuff: midstream assets, bitcoin mining, Gulf Coast ammonia plants, offshore helicopters, offshore platforms, West Texas power plants and a Fort Worth rail transloading company.
For a quarter of a century, Karen Mitchell has served as the Northern District of Texas clerk of court, making her the longest-serving clerk of court in the country. The last 25 years have been filled with life-changing events in history, but former judges who know her said one thing has remained constant: her positive attitude.
Treasure recovered off the coast of the Bahamas is being fought over in a legal tug-of-war, with the plaintiffs asking Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor to award $2.5 million in treasure it claims it is owed and punitive damages that would bring the total damages award to $8.5 million. The parties concluded the two-week-long bench trial Thursday afternoon, turning the case over to the court to decide.
In its request for a stay or a continuance, 3M argued nine weeks between trials wasn’t enough time to prepare, that its lead attorney had timely filed a vacation letter that, under local rules, should have protected her from the July 13 trial setting, and that it only learned the identities of 20 of the 30 plaintiffs in the case on March 27.
Andy Ryan and his team at Ryan Law Partners are joining the national litigation boutique and bolstering its trial group in Texas.
In this edition of Asked & Answered, Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann’s Mary Goodrich Nix looks back on her early years as a trial lawyer. She also shares advice she would give to young lawyers and discusses trends she sees impacting the practice.
Lawyers for five Ukrainian citizens who were injured or killed in Russian drone and missile attacks that allegedly used semiconductors and other technology made by American tech companies, including Texas Instruments, failed to state a legal cause of action in their federal lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The judge is allowing the lawyers for the Ukrainians 28 days to refile their complaint to address his concerns about causation.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater issued a 21-page decision that the Ukrainians’ claims are not preempted by federal law but that their case is dismissed because the lawsuit failed to show that the “defendant’s conduct is the cause in fact of a plaintiff’s injury” and that the defendant’s “act or omission was a substantial factor in bringing about the injuries, and without it, the harm would not have occurred.”
DISH DBS Corporation, DISH Wireless and 16 affiliated companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday in the Southern District of Texas.
Shell Offshore, a subsidiary of Houston-based oil giant Shell Oil, announced that it is selling its interest in two major offshore Gulf platforms to Talos Energy and Ridgewood Energy for $1.7 billion.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2025 docket delivered a substantial course correction for the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, with the high court reversing or vacating its rulings more often than not.
The Texas Lawbook looks at Fifth Circuit decisions recently reviewed by the Supreme Court, including summaries for the high court’s merits docket, its emergency docket and its grant-vacate-remand orders.
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