Maybe you haven’t heard of ProFrac; but you probably should. The company’s been on an acquisition tear of late, gobbling up producers of pumps and proppants at an eye-popping rate. CDT Roundup has their latest deals — and the lawyers and firms that advised them, along with the usual roster of last week’s transactions.
Litigation Roundup: AT&T Hit With $166M Patent Infringement Verdict, Texas Med Schools Sued Over Affirmative Action Practices
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a team from Susman Godfrey secures a $166 million patent win against AT&T and Nokia, the Texas Supreme Court sides with insurance companies in a dispute brought by emergency room doctors over out-of-network reimbursement payments and the Fifth Circuit chides an attorney’s litigation tactic.
Royal Furgeson, DBA’s 2023 MLK Justice Award Recipient: ‘As Lawyers, Equal Justice Is Central to Our Very Being’
On Monday, Royal Furgeson, retired federal judge and founding dean of the UNT Dallas College of Law, received the Dallas Bar Association’s 2023 Martin Luther King Jr. Justice Award. In his acceptance speech, Judge Furgeson talked about the special duty of lawyers to carry on King’s work. Read the full text exclusively here.
SAExploration Sues Auditor for Malpractice, Negligence, Seeks $45M
Houston oilfield services corporation SAExploration is suing its long-time former auditor for allegedly failing to detect a $100 million fraud scheme operated by the company’s former top executives for several years. SAE accuses Pannell Kerr Forster of Texas of negligence, malpractice and “dereliction of duty” that resulted in SAE being forced into bankruptcy, subjected to multiple federal investigations, being delisted by Nasdaq and targeted for class action lawsuits.
A Word with Human Trafficking Institute’s Victor Boutros
Victor Boutros knew he wanted to devote his legal career to combatting human trafficking before he even got to law school. Now more than two decades later, after working in private practice, serving as a federal prosecutor and writing a book, Boutros leads the Human Trafficking Institute, which partners with foreign governments to help them implement trafficking enforcement systems.
The Texas Lawbook recently sat down with Boutros and will cover a CLE later today in Dallas about human trafficking trends and updates and how lawyers can get involved. More details, including how to register, in this article.
P.S. — Casino Nights, Running Tights, Calling All Trivia Brights
A fun run in Houston that benefits people with intellectual disabilities. A CLE on human trafficking. A casino night that benefits abused and neglected children. A trivia night that benefits legal aid. Natalie Posgate details them all in this week’s P.S.
Keurig Dr Pepper’s Legal Department – ‘$1 Billion Profit Center’
This is the story of three lawyers at Keurig Dr Pepper — Jim Baldwin, Anthony Shoemaker and Stephen Cole — who took a huge risk in leading a normally conservative, litigation-adverse company in suing a business partner, the business partner’s profanity-spewing founder and Dr Pepper’s biggest and universally feared competitor, Coca-Cola. Along with outside counsel at Gibson Dunn, they took a highly complex dispute and boiled it down to one sentence in a contract. By the end, they had opposing counsel pleading with the judge to push for a settlement weeks before trial. The result: a $925 million victory and a finalist for the 2022 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
SCOTX Ponders Impact of UT Attorney-Client Privilege Case on Public Information Requests
A nonprofit news organization seeks documents uncovered during a consulting firm’s investigation into allegations of favoritism in admissions to the University of Texas. Although the report was made public, UT says the underlying documents fall under attorney-client privilege.
CDT Roundup: 18 Deals, 11 Firms, 167 Lawyers, $8.3B
M&A in 2022 was down by a lot, especially in deal value. Post-pandemic 2021 was a record year, so some decline was more than possible. But according to Refinitiv, the 37 percent global decline in deal values from 2021 was, in fact, the worst year-over-year drop in value since 2001. This week’s CDT Roundup observes a few other ways in which 2022 stood out, as well as the names of 167 lawyers who helped forge the first deals of 2023.
Law Firm Lobby Shops Offer Clients One-Stop Shopping
With fewer large Texas law firms retaining lobby practice groups, those that remain are busier than ever as the 2023 legislative session promises key decisions on tax and regulatory issues for a wide range of corporate clients. The Texas Lawbook talks with three veteran lobbyists working to pass, change and kill legislation.