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Texas
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May 15, 2013
Oil Developer Can't Target Biz Partners, Texas Court Says
A Texas appeals court on Tuesday held an oil and gas developer waited too long to sue individuals in a partnership that failed to contribute operating expenses after the partnership itself was hit with a judgment for the contract breach.
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May 15, 2013
Medicare Doesn't Trump State Workers' Comp Law: 5th Circ.
The Fifth Circuit ruled Tuesday that a Medicare statute cannot trump a Texas law that requires preauthorization for workers' compensation expenses because Medicare indicates that claimants should exhaust their state law remedies first.
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May 14, 2013
Texas Sen. Cornyn Seeks To Push Mexico On Water Treaty
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Tuesday put forward an amendment to a water resources law calling on the Obama administration to force Mexico to uphold its water obligations to the U.S. under a 1944 water sharing treaty to stem a growing water shortage in his home state.
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May 14, 2013
Texas Court Rejects Sanctions Bids In Solar Engine Suit
A Texas appeals court on Tuesday refused to grant sanctions in a dispute over solar turbine engines planned for an Arabian Gulf project and rejected arguments that two parallel court proceedings should be consolidated in a single suit.
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May 14, 2013
Investors Can't Revive Suit Over Failed $60M Oil Rig Deal
A Texas appeals court on Tuesday ruled that a pair of oil and gas investors could not recover a commission their broker made on a $60 million offshore oil rig acquisition after allegedly misappropriating the investors’ business plan to steer the deal to another client.
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May 14, 2013
Hospital's $350M Bond Issuance Suit Falls In 5th Circ.
A Louisiana hospital operator on Tuesday lost its suit over bond insurer National Public Finance Guarantee Corp.'s delay in deciding to approve its plan to issue $350 million in additional bonds, when the Fifth Circuit ruled their agreement allowed National Public to withhold approval.
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May 14, 2013
Architecture Firm Must Leave Sculpture Behind, Landlord Says
Architecture firm HKS Inc.'s current landlord sued the company Thursday in Texas state court to block it from taking a giant courtyard sculpture to its planned new digs when it moves out after 15 years at its current location.
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May 14, 2013
Dell Accuses Toshiba, Sony Of Fixing Prices For Disk Drives
Dell Inc. on Monday struck Toshiba Corp., Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and other major electronics companies with an antitrust lawsuit in Texas federal court, accusing them of engaging in a wide-ranging conspiracy to fix prices in the market for optical disk drives.
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May 14, 2013
Texas Sens. Pass Bill Limiting Insurers' 3rd-Party Recovery
The Texas Senate on Tuesday passed a bill clamping down on health insurers’ practice of aggressively collecting damages from third parties that caused injuries to insured patients by making them share in attorneys' fees, sending the measure to Gov. Rick Perry for approval.
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May 14, 2013
$223M Medicare Fraud Sweep Nets 89 Across US
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that 89 individuals, including doctors and nurses, have been indicted across the U.S. for allegedly orchestrating $223 million worth of Medicare fraud schemes involving kickbacks to patients, surgeries that weren’t performed and massages billed as physical therapy.
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May 13, 2013
Sunoco Partnership Preps Eaglebine Pipeline In Texas
Sunoco Logistics Partners LP, a publicly traded partnership that owns and operates oil pipelines and storage and transportation buildings, is seeking customers for its Eaglebine Express crude petroleum pipeline in Texas, Sunoco Logistics said Monday.
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May 13, 2013
Justices Urged To Take Up Trademark Row Over Greek Paddles
A Texas craftsman who sells ceremonial paddles aimed at fraternities and sororities last week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift an injunction barring him from advertising using the Greek organizations’ trademarks, arguing the groups waited too long to sue and shouldn’t be entitled to relief.
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May 13, 2013
Texas Lawmakers Push Health-Data Modernization Bills
Texas lawmakers on Thursday gave final approval to legislation designed to modernize medical data management and are pushing another pair of measures that aim to make the insurance preapproval process for prescription drugs and other health care benefits easier on patients.
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May 13, 2013
Texas Judge Punts On Cement-Dust Coverage Suit
A Texas federal judge has declined to rule on an effort by Continental Insurance Co. to dodge payment of legal fees incurred by cement manufacturing companies fighting more than four dozen pollution lawsuits, finding that the dispute should be considered in California.
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May 13, 2013
Physicians Seek Supreme Court's Take On $43M Fraud Ruling
Two physicians have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on their criminal Medicare fraud case, saying although the Fifth Circuit nixed a $43 million judgment against them, it failed to reimburse them for claims that the federal government inappropriately argued were medically unnecessary.
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May 13, 2013
Contractors Group Slams EEOC Same-Sex Harassment Claim
A general contractors trade group on Friday urged the full Fifth Circuit to reject the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's claims that a construction company supervisor's use of gay epithets toward a straight male iron worker constituted sexual harassment.
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May 13, 2013
Texas Health Co. Loses Appeal For Workers' Comp Arbitration
Trisun Healthcare LLC can’t rely on an arbitration agreement an employee signed with one of its affiliates to avoid a lawsuit over an alleged workplace injury, a Texas appeals court held Thursday.
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May 13, 2013
HP, Dell Accused Of Infringing Touch-Screen Patent
Texas-based Touchscreen Gestures LLC hit Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. with patent lawsuits in Texas federal court on Friday, the latest in a string of suits filed by the company claiming infringement of touch-screen technology.
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May 10, 2013
Clement Brief Backs BP In Row Over $8B Deepwater Settlement
Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement on Friday filed a Fifth Circuit amicus brief on behalf of accounting experts who support BP PLC’s allegations that a judge misconstrued the terms of its $7.8 billion settlement with Gulf of Mexico businesses claiming losses from the Deepwater Horizon spill, allowing an administrator to overpay them.
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May 10, 2013
Google Search Targeted In Data-Retrieval Patent Suit
Google Inc. was hit with a suit Friday in Texas federal court brought by a Taiwanese research institution that claims the search engine giant’s Google Search and other products infringe its information retrieval system patent.
Expert Analysis
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A Victory For State-Action Doctrine Critics
On Feb. 19, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court visited a corner of the antitrust map that it last glimpsed during the Reagan administration — the state-action doctrine. The ruling in FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System Inc. will almost certainly be hailed as a major victory for critics of the state-action doctrine, say attorneys with Paul Hastings LLP.
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Strategy Savvy From Strategic Growth's Mile High Bank Buy
Strategic Growth Bancorp Inc.’s successful acquisition and recapitalization of Mile High Banks illustrates the potential advantages of undertaking a distressed bank recapitalization in the context of a section 363 sale. The process is a complex one, however, and requires the near-seamless integration of bankruptcy, mergers and acquisition, tax and bank regulatory issues, say attorneys with Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.
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Camp Bowie Empowers Debtors In Ch. 11 Confirmation
Deepening a circuit split, the Fifth Circuit has rejected the concept of artificial impairment in Western Real Estate Equities LLC v. Village at Camp Bowie I LP. This decision is concerning for real estate lenders because it provides a new tool for single asset real estate debtors to confirm a plan over the objection of an oversecured creditor, even where there is no economically significant unsecured debt, say Scott Grossman and Ari Newman of Greenberg Traurig PA.
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A Texas Template For Safely Armed Teachers
In the wake of the tragic events in Newtown, Conn., the issue of whether or not to arm teachers has popped up on the radars of schools nationwide. In Texas, teachers can already have a concealed weapon on school property with licensing and school consent, but the proper process for allowing teachers and administrators to carry concealed handguns is up for discussion, says J. David Giddens of Fisher & Phillips LLP.
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Common Insurance Problems For Foreclosing Mortgagees
Foreclosing mortgagees and other property transferees can usually recover replacement cost coverage and loss of rents under a policyholder-owner’s property insurance policy, provided a valid, post-loss assignment occurs, and the rebuilding requirement and any other conditions are satisfied. But policyholders and prospective assignees should be cautious in structuring such arrangements, as some courts have applied unreasonably strict interpretations to replacement cost coverage provisions, say attorneys with Lowenstein Sandler LLP.
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Ch. 15 — Still Coming Of Age
Contrary to the view that Chapter 15 can provide a method for a foreign entity to obtain a U.S. “rubber stamp” on foreign insolvency rulings, recent decisions from the Fifth Circuit, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York mark a stage in the development of Chapter 15 jurisprudence that is complex and nuanced, say attorneys with WilmerHale LLP.
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Texas High Court Fails To Clean Up Law of Negligence
Previously, the Supreme Court of Texas has changed the test for factual causation in Texas negligence law from a but-for test to a substantial-factor test. The change is incomplete, however, because some of the old but-for language persists in the court’s decisions. The recent case of Rodriguez-Escobar v. Goss gave the court an opportunity to straighten out this doctrinal confusion in the law of negligence, but the court failed to take it, says Kelly Kirkland of Fulkerson Lotz LLP.
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7 Resolutions For Legal Industry Marketing In 2013
The New Year is still in its infancy, and there is no better time to craft a list of professional resolutions. To ease into the process, consider seven easy steps for super-charging your marketing and communications efforts in 2013, says Michael Bond of Blattel Communications.
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And Now A Word From The Panel ...
As we gear up for the next meeting by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation — scheduled for Jan. 31 in the backyard of the “Most Magical Place on Earth,” Orlando, Fla. — let us explore a recurring question that the Panel addressed in two of its rulings on motions heard at its last session in Dallas, Texas: When will the Panel NOT create an MDL? says Alan Rothman of Kaye Scholer LLP.
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Gunn V. Minton Will Impact Future Patent Malpractice Cases
On Jan. 16, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Gunn v. Minton. Should the court affirm the Texas Supreme Court’s holding, intellectual property attorneys facing a legal malpractice claim arising out of an underlying patent representation may be able to take advantage of a federal forum. If, however, the court reverses, IP attorneys will need to defend such legal malpractice claims in state courts with no patent law experience, say Richard Simpson and Justin Heminger of Wiley Rein LLP.