Dallas-based trial law firm Deans & Lyons, LLP, is expanding its Texas footprint with the addition of five prominent trial attorneys in the firm’s newly opened Houston office at 1001 Fannin St., Suite 1925.

Joining the firm are veteran Houston trial lawyers Tom Sartwelle, Matt Pletcher and Jeff Nobles, previously with the Houston office of Beirne, Maynard & Parsons, LLP, and Chad Castille and Matt McCracken, previously of Houston-based Serpe Jones Andrews Callender & Bell, PLLC.

Castille will serve as managing partner of the Houston office. His practice is concentrated on complex civil litigation, representing individuals, small businesses and Fortune 500 corporations in a diverse array of industries. His experience includes cases involving medical and hospital negligence, oil and gas, commercial and residential construction, pharmaceutical liability, medical devices, catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death, and commercial business disputes and torts.

Sartwelle has nearly 50 years of experience and has tried cases throughout Texas involving commercial business disputes; catastrophic personal injury; products liability; and medical, hospital and legal malpractice. He tried to verdict a case involving the first Texas corporation to be indicted for murder. He is Board Certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in Personal Injury Trial Law and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy as a Civil Trial Advocate and a Civil Pretrial Practice Advocate. He is also Board Certified by the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys as a Legal Malpractice and Medical Malpractice Specialist and serves as an officer with that organization. He joins as of counsel.

Pletcher is an experienced trial lawyer with a focus on cases involving commercial business disputes, products liability, professional negligence, and employment, health care, pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech litigation and civil appeals. In addition, he has successfully represented clients in a variety of civil claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. He joins as partner.

Nobles is an appellate lawyer with experience handling a variety of civil appeals in state and federal courts throughout Texas. He has successfully represented plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of complex trials and appeals involving commercial business disputes, catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death, and products litigation. He is Board Certified in Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and is a former chair of the Houston Bar Association’s Appellate Practice Section and the Appellate Pro Bono Committee. He joins as partner.

McCracken’s trial and appellate experience includes cases involving professional liability with an emphasis on doctor and hospital litigation. He also handles matters involving a variety of industries including manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, and health care. He has briefed and argued major cases to state and federal appellate courts in Texas including the Texas Supreme Court. He has been an invited lecturer on legal ethics issues. He joins as partner.

In an article published by IPWatchdog, James Cosgrove, a legal analyst at Juristat, offers some guidance on general trends regarding appeals at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and shows practitioners how to use big data to win their appeals.

“In the patent world, the phrase ‘final rejection’ has something of a unique meaning,” Cosgrove writes. “While the uninitiated likely would assume that a final rejection would indicate the end of the patent prosecution process, it is actually just the beginning of the final stage of prosecution, when applicants must decide how hard they really want to fight for their patent.”

He says the applicant has three ways forward at that point, and discusses the third: appealing the examiner’s rejection.

Read the article.

Contractual provisions for liquidated damages, indemnification, or other limitations on liability are a few of the most commonly used “damage control” tools, points out Theresa Y. Kananen for Arnall Golden Gregory LLP.

“In too many cases, however, drafting errors transform the very provisions intended to provide for clear-cut remedies, or clear-cut limitations on remedies, into sources of prolonged and expensive litigation,” she writes.

She lists and discusses three of the most common pitfalls to avoid when using one of these “damage control” provisions in a contract, including liquidated vs. actual damages, indemnity clauses and conspicuous limitations.

Read the article.

The National Association of Corporate Directors’ 2016 edition of Governance Challenges combines guidance from five strategic content partners of the NACD with broad M&A expertise. The report addresses the importance of early board engagement in strategy, the need for proactive dialogue with all key stakeholders, and the imperative to balance short-term and long-term goals throughout the M&A process.

A complimentary copy of the report is available for download.

Boards can use this new resource to:

• identify “drive and drag” factors that can advance or delay transaction results;
• monitor key aspects of the due-diligence process before approving the deal;
• understand the tax implications of a prospective transaction;
• consider exposure to risk from antitrust liability, cybersecurity challenges, and environmental liability; and
• select and retain talent and adjust compensation arrangements during the leadership change.

Download the report.

Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas (Legal Aid) has announced the recipients of its 16th Annual Women’s Advocacy Awards to be presented on July 12 in Dallas. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas will receive the Business Leadership Award; Rev. Larry James and  CitySquare will receive the Nonprofit Leadership Award; Paul Zoltan will receive the Louise Raggio Women’s Legal Advocate Award; and Randy Johnston will receive the Champion of Justice Award.

The Women’s Advocacy Awards (WAA) supports civil legal aid for victims of domestic violence. Each year, the WAA recognizes exceptional advocacy on behalf of women living in poverty. This year’s event will be held at 6 p.m., July 12, 2016, in Arlington Hall at Lee Park.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) has a long history of working to advance opportunities for women and children in Texas. BCBSTX has provided numerous grants through its “Healthy Kids, Healthy Families” initiative, partnering with nonprofits to offer sustainable programs to underserved communities and provides safe environments for growth. Notable among these are partnerships with the Caring for Children Foundation, which provides immunizations to uninsured children through its Care Van fleet, and the Texas Women’s Empowerment Foundation, which provides urban gardens along with healthy cooking demonstrations and mentoring provided to residents in need, as well as “Kids Meals,” a Meals-on-Wheels-style summer program that helps feed young children who may not otherwise have regular meals outside the school year due to limited economic and transportation resources.

BCBSTX also created the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas STEM Scholarship, which provides $20,000 scholarships to underprivileged high school seniors seeking college study in a STEM-related field. In a related effort, BCBSTX’s WISE group (Women Improving the Strength of the Enterprise) hosts Dallas Girl Scouts at its state-of-the-art facility, providing a full day of STEM-related activities for young girls. In addition, leadership within BCBSTX actively demonstrates its support through the encouragement of executives to hold Board seats with organizations including Texas CASA, REAL School Gardens, and It’s Time Texas. The organization also promotes advancement of women from within and encourages female leadership to participate in programs such as the Leading Women’s Executive program.

Larry James

Larry James has been involved in developing and implementing holistic, justice-focused approaches to congregational and community service and outreach throughout his career. Since 1994, James has provided executive leadership for CitySquare (formerly Central Dallas Ministries), a faith-based, human and community development corporation that battles poverty and its various related expressions in several inner city neighborhoods in Dallas and beyond. First serving as Executive Director and then President and CEO, James began his CEO role with a vision for CitySquare’s future fund development and external community endeavors. CitySquare offers a variety of services to its clients: legal services, youth and children’s ministry, affordable workforce housing, initiatives related to work force development and technology training, housing interventions for homeless persons, and spiritual development to neighbors living in the communities of East and South Dallas.

James, a native of Richardson, Texas, is married to Brenda Erwin. The couple, who reside in one of the neighborhoods CitySquare serves, have two grown daughters.

Paul Zoltan

Paul Zoltan is a long-time pro bono attorney volunteer specializing in immigration law. In 2014, inspired to do more when the influx of Central American women and children to Texas soared, Zoltan launched a pro se asylum workshop model that would multiply the representation provided to these refugees. In the last two years, more than 150 asylum applications for women and children have been completed at and submitted through these workshops. Through this project, Zoltan is credited with saving the lives of immigrant women and children who fled horrific and violent circumstances in their home countries.

Zoltan also mentors other attorneys, and works closely with the Catholic Charities team of AmeriCorps lawyers, whose caseloads number as high as 250 individuals and families. He helped the organization start its own legal program for immigrant children, training and mentoring staff in their representation of children in immigration court. He is a passionate advocate who fights against poor attorney practices in the field of immigration law, and is an inspiration not only to immigration lawyers, but also to those who practice in the area of public service law.

Randy Johnston

Randy Johnston has been a great supporter of women’s causes and legal aid for the poor for many years. Johnston, whose law practice focuses on the professional and ethical practice of law, is known both as “the lawyer with a ponytail” and the attorney who will sue other lawyers for malpractice and client abandonment. A founding supporter of the Dallas Bar Association’s Law Jam, a musical fundraising for the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program (DVAP), a joint program of the Dallas Bar Association and Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas. During Law Jam 2, Johnston auctioned off the right for the winning bidder to cut off his ponytail following the performance of his blues band, Blue Collar Crime. Two groups paid $7,000 each for the right to cut off his ponytail, and all of the proceeds went to DVAP.  Randy was awarded a Presidential Citation by the Dallas Bar Association for his efforts to aid the poor.

He is a highly sought after speaker, presenting more than 100 speeches designed to educate other lawyers on how to avoid client problems while complying with the ethical rules and standards of professionalism. Johnston is proud to practice law with Robert Tobey, Chad Baruch, and his son, Coyt. He is married and the proud father of eight children, five of whom are strong, independent women.

Ramona’s Story

Ramona’s husband tried to kill her in front of a crowd of bystanders when he lifted her off of the ground by the throat. Before bystanders could intervene, Ramona was thrown onto the concrete sidewalk and she lost consciousness. A witness called police, but the abuser had fled the scene and his family and friends refused to cooperate with authorities or share the husband’s location.

With her husband on the run, Ramona, the mother of two children, filed for divorce pro se. Unsure how to proceed on her own, she applied for help at Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas (Legal Aid). With the assistance of the Legal Aid attorney, Ramona amended the petition for divorce, and located and served her husband, who was in jail. Legal Aid assisted Ramona in finalizing the divorce, where she obtained sole managing conservatorship of her children, permanent injunctions against further abuse by or contact from her ex-husband, and no visitation of the children by their father.

The Women’s Advocacy Awards event helps provide critical civil legal aid for women like Ramona. This year’s WAA event takes place from 6-8 pm on Tuesday, July 12 in Arlington Hall at Lee Park in Dallas. Additional information is available on the 16th Annual Women’s Advocacy Awards Facebook event page, https://www.facebook.com/events/1572399809724590/permalink/1580695462228358, or by contacting Sam Prince at princes@lanwt.org.

Above the Law is reporting that BigLaw firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore has hiked annual salaries for associates — ranging from $180,000 for first-year associates to $315,000 for eighth-years.

The report cites a memorandum, which Above the Law received from multiple Cravath sources, as saying, “The increase is effective July 1, 2016, and will be reflected in paychecks commencing on July 8, 2016.”

The author, David Lat, also says the news raises several questions, such as How did this event come to pass? Will other firms match the new Cravath scale? How fast will the matching happen? Will any other firm beat the new Cravath scale? and What does this mean for bonuses? He offers his opinions on each of those points.

Read the report.

The Center for Board Excellence is offering a free whitepaper that describes moving the directors and officers questionnaire process to a dynamic online system.

CBE says the paper explains how to save time and money by moving the D&O questionnaire online to:

• Reduce the number of questions
• Make them easier to follow and answer
• Turn definitions and schedules into dynamic flyovers or online links

“Focus particularly on the cost of your Directors’ and Officers’ time,” CBE suggests. “How much time did it take them to complete the process? How many irrelevant questions did they have to read and skip over? How many definitions did they have to look up in an appendix? Add to that the time it took you to compile the questionnaire and parse the results only to find that three forms came back incomplete.”

Download the paper or request a demo.

A new filing in the re-trial of former Dewey & LeBoeuf chief financial officer Joel Sanders and former executive director Stephen DiCarmine alleges that two former Dewey partners put pressure upon the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to look into the financials of the failed firm, reports Kathryn Rubino in Above the Law.

Three former Dewey executives went on trial last year for their roles in the demise of the firm. After a mistrial, former Dewey chairman, Steven Davis, signed a deferred prosecution agreement, and Sanders and DiCarmine could be facing a new trial in 2017.

“It is in the context of this new trial that Sanders’s legal team filed documents suggesting two attorneys pressured the District Attorney’s office to investigate the firm’s finances,” Rubino reports.

Read the article.

An article in King & Spalding’s Energy Newsletter discusses some of the issues that are typically addressed in a unitization and unit operating agreement (UUOA) that may require particular attention in the context of a cross-border unitization. Authors are Philip Weems and Nina Howell.

“An oil or gas reservoir may straddle adjacent contract areas,” the authors explain. “Unitization is the process whereby the straddling reservoir is jointly developed by the interest owners in the adjacent contract groups.  Joint development of a straddling reservoir is usually more economical and efficient than separate developments by the adjacent contract groups.  A key principle of unitization is that the straddling reservoir is physically developed as though the boundary between the contract areas does not exist.”

They advise that in a cross-border unitization, additional scrutiny may be necessary due to the complexities and limitations that arise due the reservoir being subject to the jurisdiction of two governments.

Read the article.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently determined that the nondischargeability of debts under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2)(A), which prohibits discharge of debts “obtained by . . .  false pretenses, a false representation, or actual fraud,” does not require a false representation, reports Brian Hockett of Thompson Coburn in an article posted on JDSupra.com.

His article says the “actual fraud” exception to a bankruptcy discharge includes other traditional forms of fraud, including fraudulent conveyances that do not necessarily include a representation by the debtor or reliance by the creditor.

“This important decision by the Supreme Court resolves a split among lower courts and opens up potential additional opportunities for creditors to pursue nondischargeability actions under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2)(A),” Hockett writes.

Read the article.

Employers are not exempt from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s reporting rule for on-the-job injuries linked to alcohol intoxication even though the injured employee’s consumption of alcoholic beverages took place off the job, reports Bradford T. Hammock of Jackson Lewis.

Amanda Edens, head of OSHA’s Technical Support and Emergency Management Directorate, outlined the interpretation in a later that was released April 18.

“According to Edens, OSHA health care professionals concluded the exception for self-medication does not apply because consuming alcohol ‘does not treat the disorder of alcoholism. Instead, drinking alcohol is a manifestation of the disorder,’ ” the article says.

Read the article.

Contract drafting is one of those subjects that just doesn’t get the attention it deserves, write Edward J. Hansen and Christopher C. Archer of Morgan Lewis, in the firm’s Sourcing@MorganLewis blog.

“Contracts for complex sourcing deals are problematically big and often written in a style that doesn’t speak to the people who should be reading them,” they write. “The language may be great if the reader is a judge, but there is a very small probability that a judge will ever see the contract. So, the challenge is to write a contract that can work for a judge but that primarily works for a business user.”

They offer some of their favorite tips for drafting a readable contract.

Read the article.

The Court of Appeals in North Carolina recently confronted the question of what happens when a contractor and subcontractor, having gone back and forth on a few contract terms while the sub is performing work, reach the end of the project – or at least the end of the sub’s work – without an agreed contract form. Stan Martin discussed the issue in a recent article posted on Commonsense Construction Law’s blog.

“Parties who allow the schedule to control performance without resolving the paperwork could find themselves in a mess, particularly if the back-and-forth on contract terms never stops,” Martin writes. “The sub is unhappy about not being paid, and the GC is unhappy about what it perceives to be a less-than-friendly forum. (Or maybe the GC simply wants the sub to bear the inconvenience of the 100-mile or so trip between counties.) And the court will have to sort out the mess, at a greater cost than either party wants.”

Read the article.

The key challenge for compensation committee members continues to be to approve compensation programs that directors believe are right for their companies, while maintaining an understanding of shareholder views and an ability to communicate the appropriateness of their compensation decisions sufficient to avoid criticism that could undermine directors’ abilities to act in their company’s best interest, according to a post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation.

In the post Compensation Season 2016, the authors identified key considerations for compensation committees in the upcoming compensation season.

Read the article.

As the U.S. Supreme Court enters the last month of its term, the impact of having only eight justices already is clear. Some of the most high-profile cases of the year are not being decided, or perhaps even worse, are being resolved on narrow grounds that create more confusion than clarity in the law, writes Erwin Chemerinsky in the ABA Journal.

Chemerinsky is Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

“A 4-4 tie, which affirms the lower court without opinion by an evenly divided high court, is not a problem when there is no split among the lower courts and there already is a clear prior decision on point. In fact, in a couple of cases, the justices divided 4-4 on whether to overrule a precedent,” writes Chemerinsky.

He discusses Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which raised the issue of whether to overrule Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which held that non-union members of a public employees’ union can be required to pay the share of the union dues that go to support the collective bargaining activities of the union. The article also considers Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, in which one of the questions presented was whether to overrule Nevada v. Hall, which held that a state may be sued in the courts of another state.

Read the article.

Donald Trump’s attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the ­Republican presidential candidate’s vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence, reports The Washington Post.

Jose A. DelReal and Katie Zezima say that attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two class-action lawsuits against Trump University in San Diego, has been a Trump target since the judge ordered the release of embarrassing internal documents detailing predatory marketing practices at the for-profit educational venture; that case is set to go to trial after the November election.

“Having a presidential candidate embroiled in litigation totally unrelated to the political system . . . that is what is so novel about this. And then you add to this the personal criticism,” Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told the Post. “It’s personal all the way, and that’s what makes this different.

Read the article.

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Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina sued the federal government, becoming the latest health insurer to claim it is owed money under the Affordable Care Act, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

“The suit, filed on Thursday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., says the U.S. failed to live up to obligation to pay the insurer more than $147 million owed under an ACA program known as “risk corridors,” which aimed to limit the financial risks borne by insurers entering the new health-law markets,” reports Anna Wilde Mathews.

The insurer’s suit claims the federal government violated the language of the health law, as well as a contractual obligation.

Read the article.

A discrimination lawsuit brought against high-powered Boston law firm Mintz Levin by one of its former attorneys can move forward after a decision by the state’s highest court, reports The Boston Globe.

“In overruling a lower court judge who had thrown out the discrimination claims, Supreme Judicial Court justices said evidence supporting the ex-associate’s allegations of sexism and double standards inside the politically connected firm is substantial enough to warrant a jury trial,” writes Dan Adams.

The court also ruled that employers are in some circumstances barred from retaliating against workers who search for, copy, and share with their attorneys confidential company documents that may help them prove discrimination claims. The decision could affect other employment cases.

Read the article.

A new article published by Ken Adams, president of Adams Contracts Consulting LLC, explains how to reduce the chances of the confusion that results when a judge or litigator without a grounding in the subject analyzes ostensibly ambiguous contract language.

The article is posted on Thomson Reuters’ Legal Solutions Blog.

“A problem with resolving disputes over ambiguous, or allegedly ambiguous, contract language is that ambiguity is a complex topic—it arises in different ways, many of them far from obvious. So when a judge or litigator without a grounding in the subject analyzes ostensibly ambiguous contract language, confusion often results,” he writes.

His article cites some examples of courts resolving disputes over the meaning of contract language in ways that don’t make sense, including how the Second Circuit Court of Appeals invoked a principle of interpretation that’s markedly at odds with English usage, how the Third Circuit Court of Appeals opted for an unreasonable interpretation of an or, and how the Federal Circuit misanalyzed the phrase at least one of X and Y.

Read the article.

Timeliness is critical when submitting claims to the government, or any contracting party, for that matter — public or private, writes Brian Dobbs for Bass, Berry & Sims PLC. But, as a ruling in Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. Murphy demonstrates, the law does not compel contractors to bring claims prematurely. The key is recognizing when the claim has ripened and the clock has begun to tick.

Dobbs writes that Kellogg Brown & Root Services filed a claim with the Army to recover costs associated with a subcontractor’s work on a dining facility in Iraq. The Army denied the claim and KBR appealed to the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals. On the Army’s motion, the Board dismissed the claim, finding the six-year statute of limitations under the Contracts Dispute Act (CDA) had expired.

Read the article.