By Brooks Igo
(Aug. 22) – Houston litigation boutique Yetter Coleman announced on Tuesday that it has added Tracy LeRoy as a partner.
LeRoy was most recently at Sidley Austin, where she led the firm’s Houston litigation group. She has also practiced at Baker Botts and McDermott Will & Emery in her career and says she is excited about joining a “top trial boutique.”
“Yetter is a terrific firm with a reputation for being tremendous trial lawyers,” she says. “I think they’re the best around.”
An emphasis of LeRoy’s practice is representing companies in the upstream and midstream of the oil and gas industry in disputes involving the exploration, production, and transportation of oil and gas. She also handles trade secret matters, employment agreement enforceability issues and whistleblower claims.
LeRoy has been observing an increase in the number of disputes related to employees moving between and among companies due in large part to a “very fluid” environment for executives at oil and gas companies.
The fallout of bankruptcies of companies serving the oil and gas industry has also created work for LeRoy. She has represented several officers and directors who have been sued by a bankruptcy trustee or shareholders for breaching fiduciary duties that allegedly led to the company’s distress.
LeRoy helped settle one such case in March a few days before a state court trial in Harris County. She represented officers of Buccaneer Energy, an Australia based company that was drilling for oil and gas in Cook Inlet in Alaska. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2014 and ended up being sued by the bankruptcy trustee for more than $100 million in damages.
In a newsworthy pro bono effort that she started at Sidley and will continue at Yetter Coleman, LeRoy is representing the Houston SPCA in two cases related to the rescue of a herd of horses that have come to be known as the Conroe 200.
Those cases, both against the former owner of the horses who was convicted by a Montgomery County jury of five Class A misdemeanor counts of cruelty to livestock animals, are currently pending in federal court in Houston.