In the News

California’s regulatory regime is enough to give anyone the jitters, so good news that the state signed off Monday on a new rule admitting that coffee won’t kill you. California lets anyone bring a lawsuit to enforce Prop. 65, and the burden of proof rests with the defendant.

David T. Garcia, the county attorney for Brooks County, signed a contingency fee agreement with his employer to represent the county in an opioid lawsuit – a relationship that seemingly comes into conflict with the Texas Local Government Code.

Louisiana’s lawsuits against oil and gas companies — two major forces in the state’s economy — continue to draw national attention as the City of New Orleans alleges the energy industry is to blame for coastal erosion and damages to the wetlands.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have charged a physician and the owner of a medical consulting firm over a scheme to persuade women to have their pelvic mesh implants surgically removed to bolster the value of lawsuits against the devices’ manufacturers.

“House Bill 2826 gives Texas taxpayers transparency, consistency and accountability when local governments hire private attorneys on a contingency fee basis to handle government litigation,” said TLR General Counsel Lee Parsley. “The passage of HB 2826 by the Senate ensures local governments will get quality legal services at a reasonable rate that allows them to keep more of their potential awards, and we look forward to seeing it on the governor’s desk.”

You’ve seen the commercials. There’s an attorney on your TV screen, giving a “medial alert” or making a “public service announcement,” talking about problems regarding a certain prescription medicine or medical device. That lawyer asks viewers to call them if they’ve experienced problems and need legal help. Texas House members on a 112-21 vote approved Senate Bill 1189 cracking down on some of these ads, which they call “deceptive advertising of legal services.”

Pretrial motion practice in Texas state courts is one step closer to drastic change after the Senate State Affairs Committee unanimously passed two pieces of legislation Monday. The legislation would narrow the scope by limiting the anti-SLAPP law to legal actions dealing with free speech, free association and freedom to petition the government. Lawmakers meant for the law to apply only to First Amendment cases when it first passed in 2011, but the statute’s broad language allowed lawyers to use it in cases in which the legislature never intended.

Attorneys spend millions of dollars each year on ads to recruit people who may have been injured by a drug or device. Some of these fear-mongering ads frighten people to stop taking medications that can help prevent life-threatening problems like blood clots. It’s time these ads come with a warning.

It’s a world that the public rarely catches a glimpse of, but the competition for clients can lead to nasty disputes among plaintiffs attorneys and lawyer referral services who question whether the rules are being followed by everyone. For plaintiffs lawyers, referrals can be the difference between boom or bust – especially for firms that prefer a business model that includes a high volume of cases that they can settle quickly rather than finance all the way through trial.

State Rep. Steve Allison filed House Bill 3061 with the intention of addressing “the method by which certain trial and appellate judges are selected” by way of an interim study. “(Judges) are supposed to be fair and impartial yet we subject them to a very partisan election process. And Texas is one of just a handful of states that still subjects … to a partisan election. There’s been increasing scrutiny of that … we need to come up with a better system.”

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