Celanese Picks Up Materials Business from DuPont for $11B
Texas lawyers from Kirkland and Gibson Dunn advised the Dallas buyer on acquiring the business, which represented $3.5 billion of net sales and $800 million in operating earnings last year.
Mikal Watts Grills Investigator Who Concluded $26M Life-Insurance Claim Was for Mexico City Man Still Alive
If a Mexico City businessman faked his death in 2016 to steal $26 million from two U.S. life-insurance giants, he’s done a remarkable job of lying low since, the lawyer
Dissent Calls Fifth Circuit Decision an ‘Orgy of Jurisprudential Violence’
Two appellate judges ruled Thursday that United Airlines’ requirement that its employees be vaccinated causes “irreparable harm” to pilots and flight attendants who claim religious objections. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an unpublished and unsigned opinion ordering a federal judge in Fort Worth to reconsider issuing a preliminary injunction against the Chicago-based airline.
In dissent, Judge Jerry Smith called the majority opinion “absurd," argued that it creates a new cause of action for every private employee in the Fifth Circuit and stated he would hide his "head in a bag" if he had written the majority's opinion.
DBJ: UDF CEO, Execs Seek New Trial After Securities Fraud Convictions
CEO Hollis Greenlaw and his colleagues at the Grapevine REIT have demanded a new trial after their securities fraud convictions last month. They claim a “mosaic of cumulative error” caused them to be wrongfully convicted of duping investors and banks in a scheme involving loans to developers of hundreds of residential communities across Texas.
Investigator to Jury in $26M Life-Insurance Case: Two People Identified the Insured as Alive More than a Year After His ‘Death’
A private investigator testified Wednesday that two people at a Mexico City office where he was searching for the supposedly dead Eduardo Rosendi, flashing Rosendi’s photo, told him the man in the photo worked there as an accountant – and one had seen him earlier that day. The investigator was a critical witness in the third day of a federal trial in which a $26 million insurance payout is in the balance – if Rosendi is not dead. But Mikal C. Watts, the beneficiary's attorney, should get his chance at cross-examination Thursday.
Employment Suits Drop in Texas As Pandemic Drags On
Federal wage-and-hour suits have been steadily declining since the first half of 2020, when suits rose 19% from pre-pandemic days. And federal employment-discrimination lawsuits filed in Texas under Title VII were also down. Many factors may be at work, including the pandemic, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the backlog of government agencies that oversee the litigation.
Fifth Circuit Judge Ho Defends Legal Scholar Who Said a ‘Lesser Black Woman’ Might Join SCOTUS
Judge James Ho said he was scheduled to talk about originalism on Tuesday at Georgetown University, but instead decided to talk about the libertarian scholar Ilya Shapiro, who came under fire for recent comments on President Biden's pledge to appoint a black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I would submit that, if I were a law student today, and I strongly disagreed with remarks made by someone who had just recently been hired by my law school, the last thing I would do is to call for that person to be fired," Ho said.
$26M Insurance Claim: Fraud ‘So Obvious,’ or Investigation Not ‘Indisputable’
The plaintiff's attorney, Mikal C. Watts, on cross-examination of the insurers' lead witness, attacked his investigator's thoroughness and his conclusions as hardly indisputable.
M&A Oil & Gas Experts Expect More Deals Despite Rising Oil Prices
Four oil and gas partners weigh in on whether continued elevated oil prices will lead to more deal activity in the upstream and midstream sectors.
Fort Worth Bankruptcy Judge Hears Details of $33M Elevate Credit Settlement
The multistate predatory lending and fraud litigation pitting more than a million low-income plaintiffs against two Fort Worth financial tech companies – Think Finance and Elevate Credit – is in “its final chapter,” lawyers told a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlan Hale Wednesday. Elevate agreed to pay $33 million to settle three class actions and an adversarial bankruptcy complaint that alleged a decadelong scheme of predatory lending and subsequent corporate transactional legal maneuvering that claimed victims in nearly every state.