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

The Texas Supreme Court recently issued a ruling in a products liability case that puts one of Texas’ early tort reforms in the spotlight. According to Reuters, the plaintiff alleged that “a knockoff Apple TV remote sold by a Chinese third-party seller, Hu Xi Jie, was defective and allowed the battery to pop out. The remote was sold through Amazon’s ‘Fulfillment by Amazon’ service, in which the company stores sellers’ products at its warehouses and then ships them to buyers.” In its 5-2 decision, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Amazon can’t be held liable for the third-party seller’s product under Texas’ 2003 products liability law, which was a TLR initiative. Before 2003, retailers were often sued for injuries allegedly caused by defective products, despite the fact that the retailers had nothing to do with the design or manufacturing of the product. In many instances, the lawsuits against retailers were used to establish venue in a favorable county. House Bill 4, passed by the Legislature in 2003, included an “innocent retailers” defense, providing that a retailer who does nothing more than acquire a product and sell it to the customer cannot be held liable for a defect in the product.

The pandemic and recent winter storms have highlighted a stark reality: Commercial vehicles are essential for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Whether they’re carrying life-saving medicine, water supplies or critical fuel, or providing necessary services like plumbers and contractors, Texans depend on commercial vehicles. But these commercial vehicles are targeted by personal injury trial lawyers across our state for abusive lawsuits. These aggressive plaintiff lawyers have developed an unfair strategy to maximize results in commercial vehicle lawsuits by presenting the jury with misleading evidence. In most of these lawsuits, the facts simply don’t support the size of the settlements and verdicts. Ad after ad singles out trucks and company cars… any vehicle with a logo on it. These vehicles are villainized in court so plaintiff’s attorneys can come away with a big payday. But when lives are at stake, when grocery store shelves are bare and gas pumps are empty, when pipes burst and repairs are required, we need commercial vehicles for our communities to function. This played out in real-time across the Lone Star State during the winter storm. In one particularly poignant story, a professional driver for Atlas Delivery Services in Houston undertook a perilous, 197-mile trip to

Gov. Abbott announced this week that Texas was again named the top exporting state in the nation by the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the 19th consecutive year Texas has taken the top spot, and the eighth year in a row the Lone Star State has been named the top exporting state for technology products. According to the bureau’s data, Texas had $279.3 billion in exports in 2020, more than California and New York combined. That’s a lot of cargo moving on Texas roads. And a lot of targets for abusive litigation against commercial vehicle operators. We’ve recently taken a closer look at the abusive lawsuit cottage industry that is driving litigation against commercial vehicle operators. This litigation scheme started by targeting the trucking companies that are essential to Texas’ supply chain and to maintaining our status as the top exporting state in the nation. But it’s expanded since then, setting its sights on any vehicle of any size with a company’s logo on it. While other types of personal injury litigation are decreasing, Texas has seen a 118 percent increase in automobile litigation. A lawsuit was filed after one out of every ten accidents in 2019, up from one

“It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” —U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, New State Ice Co v. Liebmann It’s been said that all politics is local. Thankfully for Americans, a good bit of governing is local, too. Unlike the U.S. Congress—where gridlock and strife have become more common than principled policy solutions—the states have remained beacons of innovation and dialogue.  By and large, the states have stayed committed to making government work. Well, at least some of them. That’s the premise of Making Government Work, a reboot of the 1994 book by the same name. Edited by Texas State Rep. Tan Parker (R, Flower Mound), the 2020 edition looks at the state-level evolution of public policy, focusing on common-sense solutions to solve the most pressing needs of our communities. From education to taxes, healthcare to fair courts, the book brings together thought leaders from around the nation to discuss how principled decisions by state legislators can create opportunities for families and employers to thrive. TLR Chairman

The votes are in for the 2020 election, and while the results of a handful of races are still being finalized, by and large, we know what Texas’ Senate and House will look like in the upcoming legislative session. The men and women who will serve in the Legislature will face important tasks next year, as the pandemic continues to cast uncertainty over everything from the state budget to the logistics for committee hearings at the Capitol. One thing is certain—the decisions made by legislators in 2021 will have a lasting impact on our state’s economy, job creation and future opportunities for Texas families. At a time when many Texans are struggling, we should be doing everything we can to support job creation and economic growth in our state. For TLR, that starts with shutting down job-killing lawsuit abuse whenever and wherever it occurs, and there is no bigger area of lawsuit abuse today than commercial vehicle litigation. As we’ve outlined previously, the data demonstrates the problem. Texas has seen a 118 percent increase in the number of motor vehicle lawsuits filed since 2008. In 2019, a lawsuit was filed after one of out every 10 crashes, compared to one

Last week, Texas Supreme Court Justice Paul Green announced that he will retire from the bench in August, after serving 15 years on the state’s high court. Green is an exceptional jurist and second in seniority on the Texas Supreme Court. Green’s extensive background in litigation as an attorney and judge have been critical assets to the Texas Supreme Court. He practiced law for nearly 20 years before serving on the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio for 10 years.  While Green’s retirement will certainly be a loss to the court, we are confident Gov. Abbott will appoint a successor who is highly qualified and has the experience and temperament necessary to serve on the state’s high court. We are certain of this because Gov. Abbott’s track record of court appointments is excellent, including his recent appointments of Justices Jane Bland and Brett Busby. In fact, Texas governors from both sides of the aisle have appointed some of our state’s most qualified and dynamic judges, from former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justices Wallace Jefferson and Tom Phillips to Justices Eva Guzman and Raul Gonzalez. In addition to being fine jurists, Jefferson, Gonzalez and Guzman were historic appointments—Jefferson was our

As the U.S. continues to deal with the widespread effects of COVID-19, it’s clear no industry is immune to the pandemic’s wrath—including law firms. But do all of these law firms really need to dig into the government wallet? Some of the largest personal injury firms in the nation (many of which call Texas home) received loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The program is intended to help small businesses keep their workforces employed during the pandemic, primarily by covering the cost of payroll. Several plaintiff law firms took PPP loans—which required them to certify that the loans were necessary to preserve their ongoing operations—while simultaneously making political contributions to at least one political action committee. Further, it’s curious that many of these firms have run—and in some cases, continue to run—TV ads touting multi-million-dollar lawsuit awards and settlements, even as they claim to need a taxpayer-funded bailout to keep staff employed.  These personal injury law firms cumulatively received millions of dollars from the PPP at a time when many small businesses could not access the funds. To add insult to injury to job creators struggling to keep their doors open, some personal injury firms