Embarrassingly, the always excellent Florida Arbitration Law blog has scooped us on a Texas state appellate court decision on arbitrability. Instead of recapping their summary of the Beaumont opinion on whether or not participation in litigation discovery waives a potential right to compel arbitration, we’ll just give you a link and direct you to their commentary. The Beaumont Court, by the way, in part bases its decision on the Texas Supre

Continue reading...

Today the Fifth Circuit released its en banc opinion (link is to .pdf file) in the Positive Software case (background on case here and here). The long-awaited opinion, written by Judge Jones, sets out the rule, in the Fifth Circuit, for when a court (employing the FAA) must vacate an arbitral award based on an arbitrator’s failure to disclose a possible conflict. As we wrote in a CLE paper back in May 2005, the Fifth Circuit had not, until

Continue reading...

We are big Macintosh evangelists around here. I’ve used a Mac in my personal life since 1990, and Karl has used them here at the office as long as I can remember. For a small firm like ours they make total sense, since they do not break and allow technical amateurs like us to run our own servers, website, blog, email, etc. So, needless to say, Karl and I were both extremely excited when Steve Jobs and Apple announced the iPhone earlier this

Continue reading...

This morning, the Third Court of Appeals issued a memorandum opinion that is useful for practitioners who file, respond to or appeal Special Exceptions. The opinion, written by Justice Patterson, affirms a trial court decision (by Judge Davis) to dismiss Plaintiffs’ lawsuit with prejudice when they failed to re-plead within 45 days of the Special Exceptions having been sustained. Significantly, the Third Court did not consider whether or no

Continue reading...

On December 22, 2006, the Supreme Court came down with the opinion quoted below. The opinion is significant in two important respects: 1. The opinion demonstrates the Supreme Court holding exemplary damages “constitutionally excessive” even though the exemplary damages are within the Chapter 41 limit of $200,000.00. Therefore, this is a case where the constitutionally excessive defensive pleadings came into play. The court holds that

Continue reading...