A group of oil and gas lessors/royalty owners — who won more than $21 million on fraud and breach of lease claims at trial but lost in the court of appeals — prevailed today in the Supreme Court of Texas.
A rarity for the producer-leaning Court, the 9-0 decision in Hooks v. Samson Lone Star,
Good faith and fair dealing
New York law "implies" a duty in all contracts — a duty to perform promises in good faith.*
Does that mean a party must adjust a contractual benchmark rate if it knows something has distorted the benchmark?
Yes, the Second Circuit held in Security Plans, Inc. v. CUNA
Trying cases
Trial lawyers believe they pay a trial judge a high compliment when they say "she'll let you try your case."
The praise implies a few things — that the judge doesn't make you do everything exactly the way she did when she practiced law, doesn't interrupt you on cross right as you go
With Texas now hosting many of the world’s largest corporations,* our public policy has shifted from a patriarchal one in which we valued uniform treatment of Texas employees from one employer to the next above all else, to one in which we also value the ability of a company to maintain uniformity in
Murky bylaws
May a Delaware firm whose bylaws promise to pay the legal bills of a group of people — all of its "officers" — avoid paying on the ground that it failed to make clear who belonged in the group?
Shouldn't the rule that governs in contracts cases — that a court will construe an ambiguity against
A way out of arbitration?
A new Ninth Circuit decision points to a possible way to avoid arbitration clauses in the take-it-or-leave-it "adhesion" contracts that electronic retailers post on their websites.
Online vendors want you to accept their terms of service. That way, you will bind yourself to a form contract that mainly favors the
Our last four posts on the highest civil court in the Lone Star State went from Bloody Day at Texas Supreme Court (Mar. 28, 2014) to Do Plaintiffs Stand a Chance in the Supreme Court of Texas? (Apr. 25) to Do Plaintiffs Stand a Chance in the Supreme Court of Texas — Part 2 (May
A Question of Efficiency
Will quick review of a final judgment in just one of many cases that make up a large multi-district litigation bog the MDL process down — or make it work better?
Defense lawyers insist that consolidation of cases before a single district judge (by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation) changes
In the last two weeks, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled as follows in the 11 cases it decided:
Billions in bonds
You have a $2.5 billion judgment in a U.S. court against Argentina on bonds it defaulted on, but you have a problem. You can't find assets in the U.S. to satisfy the judgment. The pesky Argentines keep all of their seizable valuables overseas.
Can you get help from the U.S. court?
The U.S.