Austin-based U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks granted MySpace.com’s Motion to Dismiss a number of claims brought by the family of a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old she met on MySpace.com. Both the criminal prosecution of the 19-year-old and the civil suit against MySpace have garnered lots of attention both locally and nationally. The plaintiff in the civil case sought to apply duties developed in premis

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On Tuesday, the Third Court of Appeals issued an opinion dismissing a number of defamation claims brought by Williamson County’s District Attorney against the Smithville Times. The case involved a series of editorials about a Williamson County murder prosecution that ran in the Times in late 2001 and early 2002. The detailed opinion sets forth the burden a public official must meet to prevail on a defamation case. Texas Appellate Law Blog d

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Barry Barnett’s Blawgletter discussed a recent Second Circuit arbitrability opinion yesterday (Ross v. American Express). The opinion holds that Section 16 of the FAA, which allows interlocutory appeal of an order refusing to compel arbitration, applies in cases where the motion to compel arbitration was based not on a written agreement to arbitrate, but upon estoppel principles by which courts sometime compel non-signatories to arbitrate (

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The Texas Supreme Court handed down five opinions this morning. None is about arbitration, so we’ll give them short shrift here. City of San Antonio v. TPLP Office Park Properties is a discussion of the City of San Antonio’s potential police power to close access to certain roadways in order to address residents’ complaints about commercial traffic in their neighborhood. Cause No. 04-1130. In Norris v. Thomas, a five-justice maj

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Well, the Florida arbitration blog has another interesting post today. It concerns a Missouri case where a court refused to compel arbitration of a wrongful death case against a nursing home. According to that case, since the Missouri wrongful death statute creates a new cause of action in favor of the decedent’s statutory beneficiaries, and it is not a cause of action that the decedent could have had prior to his/her death, the statutory b

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The Texas Supreme Court has in the past year or two emphasized that non-signatories to arbitration agreements can still be required to arbitrate certain disputes. (see prior blog posts here, here, and here). This morning, the Court analyzed circumstances in which a non-signatory can actually compel arbitration pursuant to a contract to which the non-signatory was, of course, not a party. The majority opinion, written by Justice Hecht, continues t

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