Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Roger S. Braugh Sr. played both quarterback and defensive back for the Southern Methodist University football team from 1960 until 1962. He died in March 2019 and an autopsy performed at Boston University showed the cause was stage IV CTE. A Dallas County judge dismissed the suit after agreeing with the NCAA that the two-year deadline to bring the lawsuit had lapsed.
Texas continues to experience rapid population growth, adding nearly 563,000 new residents in 2024, pushing its population north of 31 million. To accommodate this influx, municipalities issued about $68 billion in bonds last year to fund critical infrastructure projects like schools, hospitals, and roads. The leading bond counsel firm in the state, McCall Parkhurst & Horton, advised on 372 bond issues last year as managing partner Mark Malveaux attributes the steady bond activity to the strong Texas economy and robust demand for public services and infrastructure.
The Texas Citizens Participation Act has helped media defendants and public advocates fight meritless lawsuits aimed at intimidating them into silence. Now, legislators are reviewing the anti-SLAPP law’s automatic stay of trial proceedings during an interlocutory appeal of a motion to dismiss. Critics of the 2011 law say it is too broadly written, allowing unscrupulous defendants to delay cases that have nothing to do with free speech. The high-stakes battle is playing out at the Capitol where supporters from across the political landscape face off against powerful business interests — with observers wondering if a compromise is possible.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, we give readers one guess as to why Buc-ee’s filed a new lawsuit in Missouri, CBS moves to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump, and we detail two new state court lawsuits each seeking more than $100 million in damages.
Plenty Unlimited Incorporated, a Wyoming-based vertical farming company, and six of its affiliated entities, announced Sunday that it had voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 protection in the Southern District of Texas.
Haynes Boone associate Bradley Potts credits a high school teacher for making him believe he could and should become a lawyer. But that teacher instilled something else in Potts: a love for teachers and teaching. And starting this semester at the UT School of Law, his students are learning what the real world of finance practice looks like from the ground up. Nick Peck explains how that happened after only three years of actual practice.
The chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — a global corporate law firm that has been working to open an office in Houston — said in a memo to its lawyers Sunday that he tried to get other large law firms to join together to fight against the Trump administration’s attacks on his firm and other law firms, but none did. “Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys,” Brad Karp wrote in a 1,620-word letter, which was first obtained and published by The American Lawyer. The firm counts Texas energy giants Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Noble Corp. as major clients. The firm is currently the lead legal advisor for Party City in its bankruptcy case in Houston.
In this edition of CDT Roundup for the week ending March 22, the Corporate Deal Tracker saw 18 deals with an aggregate value of $5.2 billion. That eclipses the prior week in volume (13 deals) but falls far short in value ($13.7 billion). Still, the week parses well against the same week last year which saw 18 deals for $5.4 billion. Also, The Lawbook has new 2025 quarterly deadlines for deal submissions to qualify for its annual firm and lawyer deal rankings. Firms and lawyers who wish to be considered for the first quarter and year-end Lawbook leaderboards for M&A and CapM must submit all of their first-quarter deals by April 7 at 5 p.m.
A fourth-year associate in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher made his first oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday when he defended a ruling by a lower court that neither the U.S. Justice Department nor the defendant in the case believe was correct.
The torts and defamation case centered on the role of Greenpeace, the activist international environmental group, on protests in 2016 and 2017 against a controversial North Dakota pipeline. Greenpeace, based in the Netherlands, said the verdict could cause an end to its U.S. organization. Trey Cox, a Dallas partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, led the legal effort for the plaintiffs with an all-Texas team.
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