Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A new lawsuit filed in Harris County Thursday evening accuses litigation support services company Lexitas of systematically breaching an agreement with Houston-based legal video and litigation support company SmartDisk by siphoning off work it was entitled to perform to other entities.
Recent developments in college sports foreshadow a drift away from treating NIL as a set of legal rights freely owned by each student-athlete in favor of a regulated system that may ultimately shortchange NIL value, leaving many current and future college athletes questioning the fate of their financial futures.
The Fifth Court of Appeals this week granted an emergency motion to stay a trial court’s order that would have required Sun Holdings and affiliated companies to post a more than $150 million supersedeas bond before appealing a $30.7 million jury verdict against it.
Two peppy chihuahua mixes trail Charla Aldous through her Dallas office. Lucy and Loretta Mae are adopted rescue dogs who are considered as much law firm staff as any of the human employees. Aldous’ rescuer spirit has translated to her decadeslong career as a trial lawyer pursuing social justice. In one of her earliest cases, recognizing her guardian-like persona, clients gifted her a gold-plated angel lapel pin, which she wears in trials to this day. “I've been doing this for 37 years, and strangely enough, I still love it,” Aldous said in a November interview with The Texas Lawbook.
Jessica Cox and Gloria Cangé, young lawyers from the firm, won a swift jury verdict over conditions in “a really horrible house.”
The current enforcement landscape is a new and complicated playing field in which both Republican and Democratic AGs are eyeing business as prime enforcement targets. Business leaders and general counsel, particularly those with business operations in multiple states, would do well to pay attention to the competing enforcement priorities.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Texas turns to the state’s Supreme Court in a bid to revive its lawsuit alleging Google violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a Haynes Boone team gets a $3.5 million jury award overturned on appeal, and a new lawsuit in Dallas alleges the illegal dumping of tons of dirt tainted with heavy metals has imperiled construction of an affordable housing project.
Last November and December, Houston-based Coterra Energy spent nearly $4 billion in a series of major investments in the Permian Basin. Last week, the company announced that it may be reopening its activity in the Marcellus, which it all but abandoned in August. Also last week gas prices dropped precipitously. Tom Jorden, the company's CEO explained to analysts why Coterra is banking on increased demand and the flexibility to make — or not make — capital commitments. The CDT Roundup looks at his remarks, along with last week's transactions.
A new bill was recently filed in the Texas House to ease the burden of landlords that want to evict a tenant. It provides for sweeping reforms to the Texas Property Code, all of which are aimed at removing due process protections and denying tenants access to justice, such as getting help from legal aid lawyers. Afterall, it’s much easier to evict tenants that can’t defend themselves. And if you can’t win in a fair fight, then simply make sure the fight is rigged.
I’m not arguing that eviction is inherently wrong. Private property owners should be paid for the use of their property. But I am saying that evictions should be executed lawfully. It’s only the unlawful evictions I have a problem with. It just turns out, that describes most of them. And by the way, we only win the cases where the landlord proceeded unlawfully.
We shouldn’t fix this problem by making lawful what is currently unlawful. And we certainly shouldn’t fix it by removing due process and accountability from the system so that landlords can return to an environment where noncompliance with the law is simply overlooked and the poor can be denied their rights as a matter of course.
The bankruptcy trustee appointed to recover funds for creditors in the GWG Holdings bankruptcy case has sued Holland & Knight for nearly $150 million for “knowing participation in a fraudulent looting scheme and associated criminal enterprise” that included Dallas-based financial services firm Beneficient and its founder and CEO Bradley Heppner. In a 156-page complaint filed Friday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, the court-appointed trustee accuses longtime outside counsel Holland & Knight and one of its Dallas law partners of colluding with Heppner to “fraudulently induce” GWG to invest the $148.4 million to help BEN “stave off collapse” by repaying a senior lender.
© Copyright 2025 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
