Recent Victories in the Trial and Appellate Courts
The Firm has enjoyed success at every level of the legal system.
We have prevailed in trial courts, arbitration proceedings, intermediate
appellate courts, the Supreme Court of Texas, and the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The following summary is
not a comprehensive report of our trial and appellate victories,
and, of course, we cannot guarantee success in any particular matter.
Nevertheless, this summary illustrates the breadth and depth of
the Firm’s practice.
Trial and Arbitration
The Firm represented a small oil and gas company that possessed confidential information about potential areas for future development. As part of a larger transaction, our client gave a larger oil and gas company access to this confidential information in return for a confidentiality agreement and a non-competition agreement. When the larger company violated those agreements, the Firm’s client filed suit for breach of contract and fraud. After a four-week trial, a jury awarded the Firm’s client $40 million in actual damages and $100 million in punitive damages.
The Firm defended a large engineering firm in an international arbitration proceeding arising out of the design and construction of a power plant in Europe. The Firm’s client was accused of negligently designing and managing certain aspects of the project. The claimant’s alleged damages were $120 million. Our client asserted a counterclaim for unpaid bills. The international arbitration panel granted the majority of the relief sought by the Firm’s client and denied substantially all the relief requested by the opposing party, resulting in a net award of approximately $5 million to the Firm’s client.
The Firm recently defended a national accounting firm in a suit for fraud, breach of contract, and accounting malpractice brought by a multinational bank. The bank had retained the accounting firm to perform professional services in connection with an inventory in which the bank had obtained a security interest. When the bank later learned that the amount of the inventory had been overstated, it blamed the accountants. At trial, however, the jury rejected the bank’s claim, and our client received a take nothing judgment. We achieved this result in spite of the prevalent bias against accountants created by Arthur Andersen, which was on trial for accounting misdeeds in the Enron disaster at the same time.
The Firm defended a large oil company in a three similar lawsuits filed in three different courts. In each of these cases, the plaintiffs were former employees of our client who had been severely injured in on-the-job accidents. One of the plaintiffs died prior to trial as a result of his injuries. Plaintiffs argued our client’s negligence caused their injuries, and they further asserted that our clients set up a worker’s compensation program that was illegal and a sham. Plaintiffs sought in excess of $300 million combined in the three trials. The Firm obtained take nothing judgments in favor of our client in all three cases.
The Firm defended estate-planning attorneys who had been embroiled in a dispute involving the estate of J. Howard Marshall, II, a Billionaire oilman. Mr. Marshall’s eldest son, who was excluded from any inheritance by his father’s will, alleged that he had made an oral contract with his father concerning his father’s estate. The younger Mr. Marshall sued a variety of defendants for breaching the alleged contract or tortiously interfering with it. In this same action, Mr. Marshall’s 27-year-old widow (known under her stage name of Anna Nicole Smith), sued most of the same defendants for allegedly interfering with Mr. Marshall's alleged promise to give her half of his estate. After a five-month trial, the Firm secured a directed verdict in favor of its clients.
In five recent trials, the Firm defended a multinational corporation from product liability claims. In each case, the plaintiffs alleged that the Firm’s client defectively designed, manufactured, and marketed respiratory equipment that had failed to protect them from exposure to silica dust. The Firm tried all five cases, and each time a jury found the Firm’s client not liable on all theories.
The Firm represented two individuals who filed a fraud claim in connection with a stock transaction. In order to induce our clients to relinquish stock options they held in a telecommunications company, the defendant made false representations that the company was about to be purchased by a third party. There was no such third party, and our clients lost millions of dollars by relinquishing their stock options. The jury found that the defendant had committed fraud, and they awarded compensatory and punitive damages totaling more than $9 million.
Texas Intermediate Courts of Appeals
Prior to the Firm’s involvement in the case, the president of a closely-held corporation was found liable for $180 million in damages based on his allegedly wrongful efforts to solicit capital for expansion of the company business. After the verdict, our Firm was retained to handle the case on appeal. The Firm succeeded in reversing the judgment and obtaining a take-nothing judgment from the Court of Appeals.
The Firm represented a national bank that was sued for releasing the proceeds of a financial instrument to a fiduciary who then misappropriated the funds. At trial, the bank was found liable for breach of contract and was ordered to pay damages and attorney’s fees to the beneficiary. The Firm reversed that judgment on appeal and obtained a take-nothing judgment from the Court of Appeals.
The Firm represented a surgeon who was sued by a professional baseball player who was injured while playing for the Detroit Tigers. Following surgery in Michigan, the baseball player returned to his home in Houston, where he suffered another injury during the off-season. At that point, the baseball player sued the Michigan doctor in Texas. The trial court dismissed the case for want of personal jurisdiction, and the Firm obtained an affirmance from the Court of Appeals.
Texas Supreme Court
The Firm took the lead in convincing the Texas Supreme Court to decertify a potential nationwide class of owners of our client’s allegedly defective computers. The Firm urged the Texas Supreme Court to promulgate stricter guidelines with respect to the requirements for class action lawsuits, and the Court responded by issuing its first written opinion analyzing and proscribing standards for so-called “(b)(2) classes.” The Court held further that plaintiffs had failed to prove that common issues predominated over individual issues, especially in light of the different state laws that applied to different members of the proposed nationwide class. Considering that the same plaintiffs’ lawyers settled a similar nationwide “computer defect” class action against Toshiba Corporation for $2.1 billion in 2000, this ruling is a substantial victory for our client. The Firm’s victory was discussed in more detail in the May 17, 2004 issue of Texas Lawyer.
The Firm was hired following trial to represent a trucking company that had been held liable for terminating an at-will employee based on an allegedly defective drug test. The Texas Supreme Court reversed that decision, holding that it would not create an exception to the at-will employment rule. The Court also refused to recognize a cause of action for negligent drug testing.
In a similar case, the Firm’s client was found liable at trial for terminating an at-will employee based on an allegedly insufficient investigation of the employee’s misconduct. Once again, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with the Firm’s analysis and reversed the judgment. The Court held that it would not create an exception to the at-will employment rule, and it refused to recognize a cause of action for negligent investigation in the employment context.
The Firm represented an oil and gas company faced with a class action lawsuit alleging the breach of an implied covenant in numerous oil and gas leases. The Firm reversed the class certification order in the Texas Supreme Court, which held that it would not permit class-wide claims for breach of implied covenants in oil and gas leases.
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Our client, a major oil and gas company, was sued in federal court on the theory that its workers compensation policies violated the federal RICO statute. The district court disagreed and granted summary judgment in our client’s favor. In a published opinion, the Fifth Circuit affirmed and held that our client’s workers compensation system complied with Texas law.
The Firm represented a Texas corporation in litigation arising out of a stock purchase agreement with a New Jersey corporation. Following the transaction, the Firm’s client learned that representations made to induce the transaction had been false, and it sued for breach of contract and securities fraud. The district court dismissed our client’s claims, but the Firm succeeded in reversing that judgment in the Fifth Circuit.
Our client brought a qui tam action alleging that various doctors and staff members of the defendant hospital had filed claims for medically unnecessary heart transplants with Medicare. The district court dismissed the suit on the grounds that the plaintiff’s complaint failed to allege a violation of the federal False Claims Act. After being retained to lead the appeal, the Firm argued — and the Fifth Circuit agreed — that the plaintiff had alleged a valid cause of action. This victory helped preserve a means of recovery for the victims of health care fraud, a result which promises to have far-reaching implications in the health care industry.
Each legal problem is different; past performance does not guarantee future results.