Ah, the murky, wild world of attorney advertising, where it pays to be the loudest, the most outrageous and the least transparent. Watch any amount of daytime television and you’ll get the picture. Attorney advertising was prohibited for many years, viewed as in indirect form of barratry (“ambulance chasing”), until a U.S. Supreme Court decision deemed it acceptable speech under the First Amendment. Since then, attorney advertising has largely been regulated by the State Bar of Texas, which implements rules enacted by the Texas Supreme Court. These rules govern the content of advertising and are meant to protect the public by ensuring attorney ads are not deceptive. They also require that the State Bar of Texas pre-approve attorney ads. That’s why we were interested to see a recent direct mail ad from a prolific storm-chasing lawyer out of Houston. This attorney has built a cottage industry around weather-related litigation. His most recent target is property owners impacted by Texas’ historic winter storm in 2021.  Much of the language in the ad is problematic. The ad includes a bolded and underlined statement near the top that the attorney’s fee will be 33.3 percent… until you read the fine print. The fee

The concept of a public nuisance goes back to old English criminal laws making it, for example, a crime to obstruct the king’s highway. In its most traditional sense, public nuisance is a “condition, activity, or situation (such as a loud noise or foul odor) that either injures the physical condition of adjacent land or interferes with its use or with the enjoyment of easements on the land or of public highways.” Liability might or might not arise from the situation, and the appropriate remedy is most often to abate the cause of the nuisance.  While each state defines public nuisance differently, an essential component is that it is an action carried out by one entity that affects the public at large, rather than an individual or small group of people, and limits their ability to use a public resource. But in recent years, the plaintiff’s bar and activist attorneys general, city attorneys and district attorneys have discovered a new use for public nuisance—implementing public policy changes by circumventing the legislative process. They claim that legal activities and products—such as oil and gas, firearms and pharmaceuticals—have harmed society and thus become a public nuisance. In one mind-boggling instance, the city

Texas’ road from Spindletop to Tesla seems unlikely, but in reality, it was inevitable. Innovation has long been in the fabric of our state. The world has Texas to thank for everything from the frozen margarita to ATMs to the first handheld calculator. And now, we can add low-cost COVID-19 vaccine to that list. Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development in Houston have developed a game-changing vaccine that will help low- and mid-income countries protect their populations from COVID-19. Much of the funding for development of the new vaccine came from Texans. The vaccine uses older, proven technologies that can be manufactured more easily and at a fraction of the price it takes to manufacture the vaccines in use in the U.S. The intellectual property to develop the vaccine has been made publicly available in order to expand access, and it has already received emergency authorization for production in India. So what’s the secret sauce that continues to attract big thinkers to the Lone Star State? A strong economy that encourages investment and research, supported by a fair legal system that shuts down innovation-killing lawsuits. Particularly in the world of vaccine

A report in the San Antonio Express-News last week about a civil lawsuit caught our attention.  The 2018 lawsuit centered around the sexual assault of a minor and was only recently publicized in a string of billboards up and down the IH-35 corridor.  What makes this story unusual is not the unexplained delay in publication of the judgment, but the judgment itself—an unprecedented $1.25 billion, none of which has been (or ever will be) collected by the plaintiff. It will never be collected, not only because the defendant cannot pay it, but because the law firm handling the case apparently never sought to collect a dime of the damages. In fact, according to the Express-News, the client was told the firm was “closing the case” after the client declined to participate in advertisements promoting the firm. So, what leads a law firm to pursue a lawsuit if it doesn’t plan to enforce the judgment?  Optics. As we’ve discussed previously, many advertising personal injury trial lawyers exploit “social inflation”—or society’s collective devaluation of a dollar—in the promotion of their services. As the general public gets accustomed to seeing larger and larger verdicts (and eye-popping salaries for athletes, entertainers and others), their

As we roll into the holiday season, America has one thing on its mind: logistics. Well, more specifically, turkeys and pumpkin pies and Christmas presents… or the lack thereof on store shelves. The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 may seem like a distant memory today, but nearly two years later, the pandemic-triggered disruptions to our supply chain linger on. Families are having trouble getting everything from food and clothing to electronics and vehicles, with prices increasing on the goods that are available. The culprit? California ports, which cut back on staffing during the pandemic and have been overwhelmed by swelling growth in demand for consumer goods, leaving cargo ships stuck off the coast of Long Beach. Ongoing truck driver shortages have further complicated the process, as there aren’t enough drivers to pick up and distribute the goods once they’re off the ships. While these challenges have been felt at ports nationwide, some are pointing to Texas as the solution. According to the Texas Ports Association, the Lone Star State ranks second in nation for waterborne commerce, with 616 million tons of foreign and domestic cargo, generating $450 billion in total economic value for Texas. That represents 25 percent of

During the 87th Session, the Legislature passed a number of measures that require approval by Texas voters before going into effect. Two of these measures deal with issues TLR has long advocated for—improving the experience, competence and quality of Texas’ judiciary.  Having qualified judicial candidates running for office is critical to ensuring every Texan has access to a fair and efficient legal system, and to strengthening our economic foundation. While TLR continues to advocate for moving away from a partisan election system of electing judges, we believe these measures are important to ensuring the judges we elect are qualified to hold their important positions.  Proposition 4: Changes to Eligibility for Certain Judicial Offices A vote YES supports making the following changes to eligibility for judges on the Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal appeals, intermediate appellate courts and district courts: Requires candidates to be residents of Texas as well as U.S. citizens; Requires 10 years of experience in Texas as a practicing lawyer or judge of a state or county court for candidates of the Supreme Court, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, or a court of appeals; Requires eight years of experience in Texas as a practicing lawyer or

In October 2020, seven top officials at the Texas Attorney General’s Office (OAG) reported potential criminal conduct by Attorney General Ken Paxton to the FBI and Travis County District Attorney’s Office. They were: the First Assistant Attorney General, Deputy First Assistant Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General for Policy & Strategy Initiatives, Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation, Deputy Attorney General for Legal Counsel, Deputy Attorney General for Administration and Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice. First Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Mateer resigned upon reporting Mr. Paxton’s alleged misconduct. Others were fired, or resigned in the face of alleged harassment conducted by OAG personnel at Paxton’s request. Four of the former officials filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the OAG, which it moved to dismiss, arguing it was immune because Ken Paxton was not “a public employee” as required by the whistleblower statute. The OAG further asserted the whistleblowers had failed to make a good-faith report of illegal conduct. A Travis County trial court refused to dismiss the whistleblowers’ action but allowed an immediate appeal of that decision pursuant to a statutory change advocated by TLR allowing an immediate appeal of a controlling question of law. On Oct. 21, 2021, Texas’ Third

Texas is home to one of the largest, most active law firms in the nation, with more than 4,000 employees in 38 divisions and 117 offices across the state. Its 750 attorneys handle more than 30,000 cases each year, many of them among the most complicated and high-profile legal issues facing the state. This isn’t a new patent practice. It’s not a real estate practice. It’s not even an oil and gas practice. It’s the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Then-Attorney General Greg Abbott once joked that his job was to “go to work, sue the Obama Administration and go home.” And while protecting the state from federal overreach is a major component of the job, the work of the Texas Attorney General’s Office is critical to the lives of countless Texas families, to state agencies and to our communities. Officially, the Attorney General’s Office is tasked with defending the state, state agencies and laws passed by the Legislature; administering the state’s child support program; pursuing certain types of criminal prosecutions; protecting taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud and abuse; defending our state from federal intrusions; and protecting the liberties of all Texans. From issues like election security to mask mandates, the

On Wednesday, September 1, House Bill 19 takes effect, clarifying the rules for how commercial vehicle lawsuits are tried in courtrooms across the state and ensuring juries have the necessary facts to arrive at a fair verdict. The bill, which was authored by Rep. Jeff Leach and sponsored by Sen. Larry Taylor, was the product of nearly two years of research and collaborative work to find a solution to one of the biggest issues facing Texas small businesses. Texas saw a 118 percent increase in vehicle litigation from 2008-2019, meaning about one in ten vehicle accidents resulted in a lawsuit. That’s not just a problem for big trucks, it’s a problem for any Texas business operating a vehicle: delivery vans, rideshare services, 18-wheelers, plumber’s trucks, and other vehicles delivering the goods and services we’ve relied on throughout the pandemic and after Texas’ winter storm. Abusive commercial vehicle litigation is built on presenting misleading evidence to the jury that is often wholly unrelated to the cause of the accident—whether inflated medical bills or prejudicial evidence about a commercial vehicle operator’s conduct. HB 19 protects the rights of Texans who are truly injured in a commercial vehicle accident while reducing opportunities for

The 14th Court of Appeals in Houston recently decided to take up one of the largest nuclear verdicts in the state. The case involves Werner Enterprises, a trucking company that was involved in an accident in West Texas that resulted in a $90 million judgment against the company.  During a winter storm, the plaintiff’s car hit a patch of ice, crossed a wide median on I-20 near Odessa and hit Werner’s truck head on. The truck driver was going 15 miles per hour below the speed limit, never lost control of the truck, and had fractions of a second to react to the oncoming car. The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who handled the wreck testified that Werner’s driver could not have done anything to prevent the accident.  In the initial trial, the judge allowed the plaintiffs to discover and present evidence of unrelated alleged safety violations by Werner going back about a decade. The plaintiff argued Werner should have sent its truck to California using a different route; or if it was going to use I-20, the driver should have been traveling closer to 15 miles per hour.  “If an accident like this is the fault of the