Thirteen years ago, Tom Melsheimer stood before U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater arguing a case that experts predicted he would lose.
Instead, a jury found in favor of Melsheimer’s client, Mark Cuban, and against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which had accused the then-Dallas Mavericks owner of insider trading.
Melsheimer was back in Judge Fitzwater’s courtroom Tuesday asking the judge to dismiss a potential precedent-setting case in which five Ukrainians injured or killed in Russian missile and drone attacks have sued Texas Instruments, Intel and two other technology companies for providing the microchips that guide the Russian weapons.
Lawyers for the Ukrainian victims contend that they have strong legal and factual arguments that a Texas jury should decide whether TI, Mansfield-based Mouser Electronics, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel knew or should have known that they were selling their technology to third parties who were then providing those technologies to Russia to use in the war in Ukraine.
But Melsheimer, who represents TI, told the judge that the plaintiffs’ lawsuits are fatally flawed because they fail to directly link the technology companies’ products to horrific attacks on Ukrainians, fail to show misconduct by the chip makers and failed to have filed their lawsuits in a timely manner.
“The plaintiffs plead facts against the Russians and the makers of the missiles but not against these defendants,” he said. “The mere existence of the chips is not enough to maintain causation. They have to show that the chips in the missiles are from our manufacturers and got there through misconduct.”
Melsheimer said the plaintiffs’ lawsuit states that many chips made by many different manufacturers have been found in the missiles and drones, which he said “undermines their argument in this case” that the chips by these four manufacturers were used in the specific attacks that injured the plaintiffs.
“Our clients are selling lawful products that somehow — we don’t know how — made it into Russian weapons,” he said.
Ashley Aull, a partner at Munger Tolles who represents Intel, told Judge Fitzwater that the lawsuit must be dismissed because it has “major constitutional defects” and because the state “tort claims impermissibly conflict with federal law.”
Aull argued that federal export laws and regulations preempt the Texas lawsuit.
“States have never regulated” [federal export matters] because it “is outside of the state’s power,” Aull said.
BakerHostetler partner Robert Julian, one of the lawyers representing the five Ukrainian plaintiffs, told Judge Fitzwater that their case “does not impact foreign policy at all.”
Julian pointed to President Bill Clinton signing a nuclear disarmament agreement in 1994 with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine in which Russia and the U.S. agreed to defend Ukraine from outside invaders.
“All Texans made a deal with the Ukrainian people that if they gave up their nuclear weapons, we would protect them,” he argued. “TI, AMD and the others made this deal with Ukraine through its representative Bill Clinton.”
Julian told the judge that federal export laws require the defendants to “know your customers and determine if there are any red flags.” He said the tech companies failed to provide ordinary care required by law.
“How do we know what ordinary care is?” the judge asked.
“Expert testimony and common sense,” Julian answered. “The products are dangerous commodities. If they were not dangerous, we would not be here.”
Melsheimer also argued that Judge Fitzwater should dismiss the case because the plaintiffs missed the two-year statute of limitations, adding that there is “no plausible reason for tolling” the filing deadline.
But Dustin Dow, also a lawyer at BakerHostetler, said the plaintiffs could not be expected to file their lawsuits in a timely manner because they were “living under an actual bombardment caused by the defendants’ products.”
“The Texas courts have long held that war tolls the statue of limitations,” Dow said.
Judge Fitzwater said he would issue a ruling on the defendants’ motion to dismiss in the coming weeks.
The primary case is Liudmyla Dmytrivina v. Texas Instruments, NDTX, Case No. 3:25-cv-03046.