Texas

  • February 18, 2025

    States Ask 5th Circ. To Rethink Contractor Wage Hike Ruling

    Republican attorneys general in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana called on the full Fifth Circuit to reconsider a panel's decision backing the Biden administration's contract worker minimum wage hike, saying the ruling contradicts at least 11 other precedential decisions.

  • February 18, 2025

    Apple Wins Ax Of Heart Monitor Patent In PTAB Remand

    After being ordered by the Federal Circuit to reconsider its decision upholding some claims of an Omni MedSci Inc. heart rate monitor patent challenged by Apple Inc., the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found all the claims of the patent invalid as obvious.

  • February 18, 2025

    Baker Botts Partner Says Inventor's Atty Is Threatening Her

    A Baker Botts LLP lawyer being sued over her comments in a news article about a patent suit against Starbucks Corp. accused opposing counsel of threatening her in an email exchange over the details of a deposition.

  • February 18, 2025

    Pillsbury Adds Reichman Jorgensen Trial Ace In Austin

    Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP announced Tuesday that it has strengthened its litigation bench with a partner who previously led the Austin, Texas, office of Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP.

  • February 18, 2025

    Proposed Tweaks To Del. Chancery Law Ignite DExit Firestorm

    Stockholder attorneys in Delaware pushed back immediately against two state Senate measures that would amend corporation law provisions at the center of recent debate over shareholder class lawsuits, big court awards and recent corporate moves to purportedly more business-friendly states such as Texas and Nevada.

  • February 18, 2025

    5th Circ. Won't Rethink DOL Win In OT Threshold Dispute

    The full Fifth Circuit refused to reconsider its decision finding the U.S. Department of Labor has the authority to create a salary threshold as part of its role in defining overtime exemptions, rejecting a Dairy Queen franchise owner's argument that the opinion conflicts with U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

  • February 18, 2025

    Diamondback Buys Midland Assets For $3B Cash Plus Stock

    Kirkland & Ellis LLP-advised oil and natural gas company Diamondback Energy Inc. on Tuesday announced plans to buy Midland Basin assets from Vinson & Elkins LLP-led Double Eagle IV Midco LLC. in a cash-and-stock deal that includes a $3 billion cash payment.

  • February 15, 2025

    Real Estate Recap: Practice Pivot, Tariff Tax, Lennar's Lawyers

    Catch up on this past week's key developments by state from Law360 Real Estate Authority — including the latest shifts in real estate law practice, a Big Law leader's predictions for a looming tariff "tax" debate, and a look at the legal talent behind homebuilder Lennar Corp.'s $5.8 billion spinoff.

  • February 14, 2025

    Loper Bright Doesn't Sink ESG Rule, Texas Judge Says

    A Texas federal judge again upheld a Biden-era rule allowing retirement fiduciaries to consider issues like climate change and social justice when choosing investments, ruling that the rule was still valid despite the U.S. Supreme Court doing away with a decades-long approach to interpreting statutes.

  • February 14, 2025

    Feds Seek Stay Of States' Methane Suit, Citing Trump Order

    The federal government has requested a pause on North Dakota and other states' challenge to a Bureau of Land Management methane waste rule, saying a stay is appropriate because the rule is under review following President Donald Trump's "Unleashing American Energy" executive order.

  • February 14, 2025

    ITC Bans Some Power Converter Devices In Vicor Patent Case

    The U.S. International Trade Commission has issued a limited order banning certain power converter modules and computing systems from being imported into the U.S., in a final decision that upheld most of an administrative law judge's findings in the dispute over patents held by electronics company Vicor Corp.

  • February 14, 2025

    SEC Crypto Mining Case Paused After Feds Bring Charges

    A Texas federal judge paused the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against a crypto asset mining and hosting company after federal prosecutors filed their own suit against three of its executives for allegedly spending investor funds on themselves instead of the mining equipment they promised.

  • February 14, 2025

    Tech Cos. Say Gilstrap Bungled Eligibility Instructions

    Three tech companies are taking issue at the Federal Circuit with jury instructions in a Texas case that implicate the U.S. Supreme Court's Alice decision, telling the Federal Circuit that the instructions "lower the standard for patent eligibility."

  • February 14, 2025

    Texas Justices OK Indirect Facts In Some Defamation Suits

    The Texas Supreme Court on Friday said plaintiffs can survive summary judgment motions by presenting evidence that a defendant was the source of defamatory information even if they don't identify specific, verbatim statements made by that person.

  • February 14, 2025

    SmileDirectClub Trustee Gets OK To Hire Orrick

    The Chapter 7 trustee liquidating SmileDirectClub can hire Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP as special litigation counsel, a Texas bankruptcy judge said Friday, concluding that Orrick met U.S. Bankruptcy Code requirements, despite him not being notified earlier of Orrick's previous work for the trustee.

  • February 14, 2025

    Old Permits Irrelevant To Pollution Controls, Texas Justices Say

    The Texas Supreme Court said that previous emissions permits have no bearing on the definition of the best available pollution control technology for new projects, weighing in on a Fifth Circuit dispute over a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in Port Arthur, Texas.

  • February 14, 2025

    Texas Investigates DeepSeek For State Privacy Law Breach

    Texas announced an investigation into Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, saying the company has run afoul of state privacy laws and has seemingly stolen Texas citizens' data.

  • February 14, 2025

    Diddy, Jay-Z Rape Lawsuit Dropped Amid Legal Ethics Battle

    An anonymous woman dropped her New York federal court lawsuit accusing Sean "Diddy" Combs and Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter of raping a teenager together, claims that launched a bitter ethics feud between personal injury attorney Tony Buzbee and Jay-Z's lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

  • February 14, 2025

    Fed. Circ. Rejects COVID Test Suit In Gilstrap-Authored Ruling

    A California federal judge properly found that Spectrum Solutions LLC didn't infringe a COVID-19 test maker's patent directed to preserving biological samples, the Federal Circuit said Friday in an opinion written by a top patent judge visiting the court.

  • February 14, 2025

    X Gets Pause On Content Filter IP Suit Pending PTAB Decision

    A Texas federal judge has granted X Corp.'s request to stay an infringement lawsuit from Sterling Computers Corp. over Sterling's content filtering patent while the Patent Trial and Appeal Board decides whether to initiate a review of the patent.

  • February 14, 2025

    Houston Energy Co. Stiffed For Cleanup Costs, Court Told

    A Houston energy company refused to decommission a toppled oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico and then failed to pay up when another party got stuck with the cleanup duty, an oil company has told a Texas federal court.

  • February 14, 2025

    Corporate Transparency Act Vital For Nat'l Security, Circs. Told

    A nationwide registry of beneficial ownership information is critical to U.S. foreign policy and national security goals, which makes a law aimed at creating one, the Corporate Transparency Act, a valid exercise of congressional authority, groups told the Fourth and Fifth circuits.

  • February 14, 2025

    Texas 911 Agencies Back GPS Alternative At FCC

    A coalition of emergency response agencies in Texas is urging the Federal Communications Commission to look beyond traditional GPS technology and explore ways to improve indoor location signaling for emergency calls, supporting a tech company's bid for an exclusive spectrum license to roll out next-generation navigation and positioning technology.

  • February 14, 2025

    Construction Groups, DOL Want Pause In DBA Rule Fight

    A challenge to the U.S. Department of Labor's final rule updating the math for Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wages needs to be paused while the department's top brass catches up on the litigation, the DOL and the groups suing told a Texas federal court Friday.

  • February 14, 2025

    Texas Justices End Election Ethics Suit Against AG Paxton

    Texas justices on Friday granted the state Commission for Lawyer Discipline's motion to drop the commission's ethics complaint against Attorney General Ken Paxton, citing its decision last month in a "nearly identical" suit against Paxton's first assistant.

Expert Analysis

  • How Judiciary Can Minimize AI Risks In Secondary Sources

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    Because courts’ standing orders on generative artificial intelligence and other safeguards do not address the risk of hallucinations in secondary source materials, the judiciary should consider enlisting legal publishers and database hosts to protect against AI-generated inaccuracies, say attorneys at Lankler Siffert & Wohl.

  • Jarkesy May Short-Circuit FERC Enforcement Cases

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    As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently suspended an enforcement proceeding under the Natural Gas Act — and the commission's customary use of administrative hearings in such proceedings could face major changes, say attorneys at Willkie.

  • How Attorneys Can Break Free From Career Enmeshment

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    Ambitious attorneys can sometimes experience career enmeshment — when your sense of self-worth becomes unhealthily tangled up in your legal vocation — but taking the time to discover and realign with your core personal values can help you recover your identity, says Janna Koretz at Azimuth Psychological.

  • 11th Circ. Ruling Offers Refresher On 'Sex-Plus' Bias Claims

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    While the Eleventh Circuit’s recent ruling in McCreight v. AuburnBank dismissed former employees’ sex-plus-age discrimination claims, the opinion reminds employers to ensure that workplace policies and practices do not treat a subgroup of employees of one sex differently than the same subgroup of another sex, say attorneys at Bradley Arant.

  • Lawyers With Disabilities Are Seeking Equity, Not Pity

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    Attorneys living with disabilities face extra challenges — including the need for special accommodations, the fear of stigmatization and the risk of being tokenized — but if given equitable opportunities, they can still rise to the top of their field, says Kate Reder Sheikh, a former attorney and legal recruiter at Major Lindsey & Africa.

  • Crypto.com's Suit Against SEC Could Hold Major Implications

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    Crypto.com's recent lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could affect the operation and regulation of crypto markets in the U.S., potentially raising more questions about the SEC's authority to regulate the industry when it's unclear whether another agency is ready to assume it, say attorneys at McGuireWoods.

  • Testing The Waters As New Texas Biz Court Ends 2nd Month

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    Despite an uptick in filings in the Texas Business Court's initial months of operation, the docket remains fairly light amid an apparent wait-and-see approach from some potential litigants, say attorneys at Norton Rose.

  • Biden Green Card Program Unlikely To Advance Post-Election

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    Even if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election and continues a Biden administration policy that would allow certain foreign relatives of American citizens to apply for green cards without leaving the U.S., a challenge in Texas federal court is likely to delay implementation for a long time, says Brad Brigante at Brigante Law.

  • Opinion

    Judicial Committee Best Venue For Litigation Funding Rules

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    The Advisory Committee on Civil Rules' recent decision to consider developing a rule for litigation funding disclosure is a welcome development, ensuring that the result will be the product of a thorough, inclusive and deliberative process that appropriately balances all interests, says Stewart Ackerly at Statera Capital.

  • The Strategic Advantages Of Appointing A Law Firm CEO

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    The impact on law firms of the recent CrowdStrike outage underscores that the business of law is no longer merely about providing supplemental support for legal practice — and helps explain why some law firms are appointing dedicated, full-time CEOs to navigate the challenges of the modern legal landscape, says Jennifer Johnson at Calibrate Strategies.

  • Fed. Circ. Ruling May Signal Software Patent Landscape Shift

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    The Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Broadband iTV, despite similarities to past decisions, chose to rely on prior cases finding patent-ineligible claims directed to receiving and displaying information, which may undermine one of the few areas of perceived predictability in the patent eligibility landscape, say attorneys at King & Wood.

  • Series

    Beekeeping Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The practice of patent law and beekeeping are not typically associated, but taking care of honeybees has enriched my legal practice by highlighting the importance of hands-on experience, continuous learning, mentorship and more, says David Longo at Oblon McClelland.

  • Opinion

    It's Time To Sound The Alarm About Lost Labor Rights

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    In the Fifth Circuit, recent rulings from judges appointed by former President Donald Trump have dismantled workers’ core labor rights, a troubling trend that we cannot risk extending under another Trump administration, say Sharon Block and Raj Nayak at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy.

  • Election Unlikely To Overhaul Antitrust Enforcers' Labor Focus

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    Although the outcome of the presidential election may alter the course of antitrust enforcement in certain areas of the economy, scrutiny of labor markets by the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice is likely to remain largely unaffected — with one notable exception, say Jared Nagley and Joy Siu at Sheppard Mullin.

  • Unpacking State AG Approaches To Digital Asset Enforcement

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    Attorneys at Cozen O'Connor survey recent digital asset enforcement by attorneys general nationwide driven by concerns over regulatory gaps where technological developments and market changes have outpaced legislation.

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