Unlike us here at TLR, most people don’t think about tort reform or the legal system on a daily basis (or even a monthly basis, for that matter). That is until lawsuit abuse flares up to impact something in their daily lives. Enter Apple and the Eastern District of Texas. Reports from industry publications recently sounded the alarm that Apple had announced plans to close its Plano and Frisco stores in April and open a new store at the Dallas Galleria. Apple has offered new jobs to the employees who are affected by the store closure. This is huge news for a company with a broad footprint in Texas. According to TechCrunch, “Apple today employs 1,000 people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which has been an increase of 33 percent in the past five years. The company also recently invested almost $30 million in its Dallas area stores.” All of this begs the question, why go to the trouble of closing two busy stores in one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, creating a massive inconvenience for countless loyal customers who regularly frequent them and the employees who count on them for their livelihoods? The answer is simpler

When we elect individuals to serve in public office, they pledge to uphold the law, do what’s best for their constituents, and spend tax dollars wisely, honestly and transparently. After all, they’re doing the work of the people. Those obligations don’t necessarily apply to contingency fee plaintiff lawyers who solicit local governments as clients. We’ve written extensively about the rise of law firms soliciting local governments to file lawsuits. At the national level, we’ve seen this in climate change and opioid litigation, but it has also become a regular occurrence in Texas. From opioids to construction defects, lawyers are propositioning local governments to file contingency-fee lawsuits—that is, the lawyer doesn’t get paid unless the case is successful. The local government takes home the leftovers after the legal and court fees have been paid. While local governments must be able to hire private lawyers, the way the contracting process currently works leaves plenty of room for abuse and over-charging by lawyers. A recent article from Legal Newsline highlights the problem. Records show that legal bills for two of the firms involved in county-level opioid litigation ranged from $160 to draft and file complaints to $3,000 or more to review the same

The TLR Foundation recently published its latest paper, The Texas Anti-SLAPP Statute: An Effective Statute, But is it Too Broad? The paper delves into the use of the Texas Citizens’ Participation Act (TCPA), which was passed in 2011 to protect the free speech rights of citizens. When the TCPA was created, its intent was to prevent powerful interests from pursuing lawsuits against people who were exercising speech and association to impact public policy—in other words, lawsuits intended to suppress the constitutional rights of citizens. Those lawsuits are sometimes called Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation, or SLAPP. The TCPA, otherwise known as the Anti-SLAPP statute, provides a way to end those lawsuits early and shift the legal costs to the persons bringing the lawsuits to suppress the freedoms of speech and association.   A common example of a SLAPP lawsuit would be an unscrupulous land developer suing citizens who oppose zoning or deed restriction changes, or who oppose a new government project in their neighborhood. TCPA can make abusers pay for those suits. However, as the foundation paper highlights, despite the Legislature’s intent in passing the law, the TCPA is unexpectedly being used to put an early end to all kinds

By: Lucy Nashed, TLR Communications Consultant Last week, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan L. Hecht delivered an outstanding State of the Judiciary address to the governor, lieutenant governor, members of the legislature and guests. The chief justice’s speech, which is delivered every other year during the legislative session, addressed several areas of accomplishment for the Texas judiciary, several areas where challenges remain and several goals for the next biennium. Below are excerpts highlighting a few of the topics Chief Justice Hecht discussed, although we encourage you to take a few moments to watch his full remarks here at the 2:10:25 mark. You can read the full text of the speech here. Judicial Selection Of the 80 intermediate appellate justices, 28—35 percent—are new. A third of the 254 constitutional county judges are new. A fourth of trial judges—district, county and justices of the peace—are new. In all, I am told, 443 Texas judges are new to their jobs. On the appellate and district courts alone, the Texas judiciary in the last election lost seven centuries of judicial experience at a single stroke. No method of judicial selection is perfect. Federal judicial confirmation hearings are regarded as a national disgrace by

By Lucy Nashed, TLR Communications Consultant Our world looks vastly different today than it did 15, 10… even just five years ago. Need a ride? There’s an app for that. Groceries? There’s an app for that, too. Need a recommendation for a handyman, doctor or hairdresser? The apps have got you covered. That’s why it was interesting to come across several articles recently that highlighted the collision (both literally and figuratively) between groundbreaking innovations in technology and one of the oldest industries on the planet—litigation. You can’t throw a rock in Austin (or most major cities, for that matter) without hitting an electric scooter. The latest innovation in ridesharing, e-scooters can be rented using a mobile app, creating alternative transportation options to supplement vehicles and public transportation. But they’re also forging a new frontier in liability, as a recent article from City Lab points out. This is the most literal sense of the collision between litigation and technology: who’s to blame when an electric scooter crashes? Is it the rider, who agreed to the terms and conditions of using the device? Is it the scooter company, which operates and maintains its fleet? Or is it the individuals employed by the

By Lucy Nashed, TLR Communications Director  The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) has released a new study on lawsuit trends, and unfortunately, some Texas-based law firms feature prominently. The study looks at the rise in the use of contingency-fee attorneys by local governments. Many of the lawsuits filed by local governments, with the encouragement of lawyers who stand to profit from the litigation, allege vague public nuisance laws that plaintiff lawyers have “transform[ed] over time into a tool for requiring businesses to remediate environmental and societal conditions regardless of fault.” In Texas, we’re seeing contingency-fee lawyers recruit local government clients, like cities, counties and school districts for lawsuits involving opioids and construction defects, among other things. The lawyers’ sales pitches are always the same: Let us sue on your behalf. We’ll pay all of the expenses. You won’t owe us a dime unless we win. Anything we win is free money for you to use however you please.  There is a time and a place for local governments to partner with private attorneys to pursue claims in court. But some of these local lawsuits can actually interfere with efforts to address public policy challenges. As ATRA notes, “the lawsuits also distract

By: Lucy Nashed, TLR Communications Director Dear Merck, Consider this letter a standing invitation to move to Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court just heard argument in a lawsuit filed against you alleging failure to provide an adequate warning about one of your prescription drugs. You had asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow you to warn consumers that use of your osteoporosis medicine might create an increased risk for upper-leg fractures. The FDA refused to approve the warning you requested, and so you moved forward using the warning label the FDA did approve, which is the only thing you could do. Through the years, you continued to work with the FDA on the warning label for your product. Eventually, the FDA agreed with your evidence that the product might increase the risk of an upper leg fracture. The FDA then approved a new warning label for your product, noting the identified risk. Of course, when the warning label changed, the trial lawyers took notice. After you changed your label, many people who had used your product and allegedly suffered femoral fractures sued you, alleging that you had failed to warn them about the bone-fracture risk. Over 1,000 of

By: Lucy Nashed, TLR Communications Director For watchdogs of the Texas legal system, the American Tort Reform Association’s annual Judicial Hellholes report provides some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Texas has successfully avoided being named the worst of the worst for the second year in a row, since storm-chasing lawyers propelled us to a Hellhole designation in 2016. The bad news is that two massive 2018 verdicts from Texas trial courts landed us on this year’s Dishonorable Mention list. And as they say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The first verdict came in August 2018, when a Dallas trial court awarded $241 million to a couple whose children were seriously injured in a car accident. The jury found that the car’s seats were defective and unreasonably dangerous. The jury assigned 95 percent of the responsibility for the plaintiffs’ injuries to Toyota and assigned only five percent of the responsibility to the distracted driver who caused the crash. According to the ATRA report, the jury found liability and awarded damages even though “the product exceeded federal safety standards, there was no evidence of a safer alternative design, and the court had refused to allow Toyota

By: Lucy Nashed, TLR Communications Director With 2018 winding down, Texas managed to squeeze in one more big national economic ranking before the ball drops. This time, it’s Forbes’ annual ranking of best states for business, which puts the Lone Star State at #3 overall (down one spot from second in 2017). Much like CNBC’s ranking from earlier this year, Forbes 13th annual list takes several categories into consideration, including business costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. Texas finished in the top 10 in four out of the five categories, ranking first for growth prospects and third for business costs and economic climate. Digging into those categories, there’s a lot to be proud of when it comes to how Texas creates opportunities for families and job creators. Like the CNBC study, however, there was one area where the Lone Star didn’t shine quite as brightly. Texas ranked a lackluster 25th for its regulatory environment, which includes an analysis of the state’s legal system. If you’ll remember, CNBC’s ranking also dinged Texas for its “sometimes difficult legal climate.” Those dynamics are complicated further with the ouster of all but one of Texas’ incumbent appeals