Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Sylvia Kerrigan and Ernest Kohnke have been corporate in-house counsel for 25 years. Kathryn Hand and Gillian Hobson have been in-house for less than two years. All four of them will be honored at the 2025 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a woman whose Lyft driver was convicted of raping her settles a civil lawsuit against the company about a week before trial was to begin in Dallas County, members of a Houston megachurch allege an improper takeover by leadership, and a jury in Austin awards a seven-figure verdict in a revenge porn case.
Southlake-based Sabre, plans to use the proceeds from the all-cash transaction to reduce debt and focus on its core business objectives. Haynes Boone and Davis Polk advised on the deal.
Last week looked much like the week that preceded it. The week ending April 26 saw a dozen deals for $8.8 billion. The preceding week saw 11 deals for $8.1 billion. This time last year we were reporting 19 transactions for $16 billion. Deals for the week included a couple of upstream asset acquisitions, a de-SPAC merger involving potential cancer cures, the sale of a waste-to-energy recycler, the acquisition by Japanese investors of Australian-owned asset management businesses, a couple of data center deals and the purchase of a school bus company still shaking off the effects of the pandemic.
Big corporate law firms operating in Texas dramatically slowed their hiring in 2024, adding the fewest new lawyers since the pandemic year of 2020. The 50 largest law firms doing business in Texas grew, on average, by only two attorneys last year — down from an average of four in 2023, according to new data compiled as part of the Texas Lawbook 50 annual firm business review. And that number is skewed due to the significant headcount growth of four law firms — Jackson Walker, Kirkland & Ellis, Paul Hastings and Sheppard Mullin. Remove those four firms and the average firm in Texas witnessed a lawyer headcount decline in 2024.
As we reported on the day of the event, the 2025 Bench Bar Conference for the Northern District of Texas held April 11, began with a bit of a bang. U.S. District Judge David Godbey caused an early stir by describing the level of personal threats against himself and against other judges and their families as a threat to judicial independence. Here are a few other notable outtakes from conference.
On the very day last week that the U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge to dismiss Susman Godfrey’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order against the Houston litigation powerhouse, the federal judge in the case was blitzed with more than 20 separate amicus briefs by 366 former judges, current law professors, former FBI and CIA directors, 77 former corporate general counsel and dozens of bar associations supporting Susman Godfrey’s legal efforts.
A Mexican company, Constructora Hostotipaquillo, sued Kellogg Brown & Root, contending that an ill-fated partnering with the Houston-based construction, engineering and consulting giant cost it more than $186 million in lost revenue.
A defamation lawsuit against Rep. Jeff Leach took center stage during a Texas House committee hearing on the Texas Citizens Participation Act. Lawmakers are struggling to address abuses of the popular law while still maintaining its protections for Texans exercising their First Amendment rights.
Susman Godfrey is getting a little help from their friends in the academic community. In an amicus brief filed late Wednesday in Susman Godfrey’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump, 775 law professors — including 27 from Texas law schools — asked a federal judge to rule in favor of the Houston-based litigation firm to help protect “the independence and integrity of the legal profession [and] the rights of clients to seek redress in the courts.”
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