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,
The American jury makes a profound contribution to the very structure and fabric of American law, Ciulla v. Rigny, 89 F. Supp. 2d 97, 98 (D. Mass. 2000), and so it is here. Indeed, this particular case would be of little interest to anyone other than the litigants were it not for the remarkable
The old firm used phone lines to help state fish and wildlife agencies issue fishing and hunting licenses. A new outfit said it did the same thing, only better, by employing the Internet.
Hoping to seize the future, the old firm buys the new one for about $1 million. Then it finds out the Internet-using
The NYT reports that a federal jury in Houston today convicted high-yield CD king Allen Stanford on all but one of the 14 fraud counts against him.
Stanford grew up in Mexia, Texas, and got a finance degree from Baylor in Waco. In the 1980s, he moved to Montserrat and later Antigua.
His Stanford Financial
Blawgletter adores cases that involve energy — oil, gas, wind, sun, nuclear, electric, tidal, you name it. We tried one last May in Texas and another last month in Louisiana — and look forward to trying a Great Many others, within Texas and without.
Which made us smile today at Judge Posner's opinion yesterday in
You may recall that, back in the go-go days, brokers sold a lot of auction rate securities to people who wanted a bit more interest than money market funds and bank accounts yielded but desired about the same degree of safety and liquidity.
When the auctions froze up in early 2008, the chumps who bought ARS couldn't get their
Way back in January 2009, Blawgletter wrote that we doubted a 1995 federal law – a sub-section of which the Second Circuit called "the RICO Amendment" — bars claims, under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, that allege fraud involving credit default swaps and other swap contracts. MLSMK Inv. Co. v. JP Morgan Chase & Co., No.
Say you write a press release. It says your firm just won a beauty contest. It claims you expect the contract to increase the firm's net income by X percent.
But your note to the fourth estate doesn't mention that the deal will raise firm costs by an Awful Lot. So much in fact that
People outside of Texas sometimes ask if you own an oil well — or raise cattle or wear boots and a Stetson or really want to secede – right after they learn you live in any of the 254 counties that comprise the Lone Star State. You'd expect that sort of thing from outlanders. We've done such
Scene: A cafe in Uptown Dallas. Noonish. Sunlight streams through half-open vertical blinds. The beams hurt your eyes. Or they would if you hadn't left as soon as Bitey started talking about the Italian Cowboy case.
Bitey: Just think, Snappy, the Supreme Court of Texas just ruled for plaintiffs last week! Shazaam!
Snappy: Imagine my surprise.
Bitey: A landlord told a