Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
With questions looming over the fate of the IRA, the likelihood of tariffs and more than a few geopolitical tensions muddying the view forward, many lawyers in the deal space are wary of describing what awaits them in the M&A market of 2025. However, one market area that almost all law firms and lawyers agree on, despite those serious variables, is that private equity will continue to help shape the world of Texas M&A.
The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas officially leaves office on Sunday, the day before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. In a wide-ranging discussion with The Texas Lawbook, Leigha Simonton reflects on her two years as chief federal prosecutor in a district that sprawls across 100 counties, and her long years of public service that led her to the job.
Anna Alvarado has an extraordinary life story. And she has experienced extraordinary success. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Alvarado grew up in government-subsidized housing at a work camp in Central California, picking grapes and selling cassette tapes. Neither of her parents spoke English. Her dad was an addict and felon who served prison time.
“Had it not been for all of those things and having to deal with all of those things, I would not be sitting here today,” Alvarado said in a 2022 interview. Today, she is a finalist for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel of the Year Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department.
In a 34-page order, Judge Scholer found that the NFL and its retirement fund must pay Michael Cloud’s lawyers at Barlow Garsek & Simon in Fort Worth $1,232,058.75 for their pretrial and trial work, $550,000 for their appellate work and $30,074.72 in costs.
Some were surprised by Gov. Greg Abbott’s selection of Jimmy Blacklock as Texas Supreme Court Chief justice, but his eyes were always on big questions about the role of the constitution and development of the law. His leadership is likely to continue the court’s conservative rulings.
In this edition of Litigation Roundup, Boeing gets a second chance to bring an end to a Southwest Airlines Pilots Association’s lawsuit, American Airlines is dealt a blow in a lawsuit over its 401(k) plan investing, and Attorney General Ken Paxton — in the wake of an appellate panel tossing his Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act suit against Google — has filed new lawsuits accusing TikTok of violating the same law and Allstate Insurance of using technology to unlawfully collect driving data to justify premium increases.
Opening statements were delivered to jurors Wednesday afternoon in the lawsuit Landry’s filed against Lowell Zachary Landry and his company, Landry Distilling, in March 2023. Landry was one of just four witnesses called to testify during the trial that ended with a verdict in his favor around 1 p.m. Monday.
Last year, there were 135 Texas-related deals (one that involves a party headquartered in Texas or advised by Texas-based lawyers) submitted to The Texas Lawbook's exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker that reached or broke the $1 billion barrier — some of them by a lot. The deals had an aggregate value of $627.2 billion, slightly below 2023 but much higher than in 2021, the record year of rebounding from the pandemic, against which many firms have measured the market in recent years.
There have been a number of utility/power deals in recent weeks, but none that seemed more significant than Constellation Energy's $26.6 billion acquisition of Houston's Calpine Energy. The deal is significant, not only for its size, but for what it says about our understanding of energy transition. Coupled, of course, with the usual CDT Roundup survey of last week's Texas-related energy transactions.
This is our list, a roster of transactions that caught our attention this year among the more than 2,000 Texas-related transactions submitted to the Corporate Deal Tracker in 2024. These "Texas-related" deals are transactions that involve either Texas-headquartered parties, Texas-based lawyers or, better yet, both.
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