In 1993, an Argentine company, Bridas, entered in to a joint venture with the government of Turkmenistan, which was recently liberated from the Soviet Union. The venture went south when the government of Turkmenistan demanded a higher royalty percentage than provided by the Joint Venture Agreement. When Bridas refused to capitulate, Turkmenistan simply banned Bridas from the country. A joint venture with a government of an unstable and new countr

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On Friday, the Third Court of Appeals issued an opinion in an accelerated appeal of a trial court’s denial of a special appearance, finding that the appellants in question did not have, in their individual capacities, sufficient contacts with the State of Texas to be subject to a Travis County District Court’s personal jurisdiction. The case involved a California corporation’s breach of a commercial lease of some Austin office s

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This past Friday, the Third Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a post-divorce fraud case which sets forth a nice statement of the law on collateral attacks in Texas. In 1993, a Timothy Chambers and his father created a Texas partnership to develop a piece of real estate. They hired attorneys to draft the paperwork, which established that Mr. Chambers’ interest was to be his separate property, a gift from his parents. In 1997, Mr. Chamber

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This morning, the Third Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a fascinating case, from a procedural perspective. Jeffrey Kendziorski obtained a judgment for fraud from a Comal County justice court against a Robert Marshall. The $2,760.50 judgment was for compensatory damages and court costs, but not for exemplary damages. Mr. Marshall appealed the judgment de novo to the Comal County Court at Law and posted a $5,521.00 surety bond (Rule 571 requi

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This morning, the Third Court of Appeals issued an opinion clearly setting forth the extent to which a division of the state waives sovereign immunity when it sues a private party. In this case, the State of Texas sued a traffic light manufacturer for breach of contract, breach of warranty and quantum meruit. The traffic light company counterclaimed for business disparagement, and the State filed a plea to the jurisdiction with respect to the cou

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This morning, in addition to the arbitration case we’ve already discussed, the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion in a judicial disqualification case, to which Justice Hecht dissented. As the court succinctly summarizes its holding: the question presented here is whether an appellate judge is disqualified because, unbeknownst to her, before she took the bench another attorney at her very large firm played a very small role in the early s

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This morning, the Texas Supreme Court issued another mandamus opinion compelling arbitration in the face of a trial court and court of appeals refusal to do so. This time the case involves a claim for tortious interference of contract. James Cashion was an insurance salesman; he signed an agency contract with a health insurance carrier that contained an arbitration clause. The carrier cut Cashion’s commissions and eventually terminated his

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Last Friday, the Texas Supreme Court issued two opinions, neither of which has anything to do with the law of arbitration. The first opinion discusses whether or not a city can be estopped from enforcing a zoning ordinance when its building official, unaware of the ordinance, mistakenly issued a permit which would have allowed construction in violation of the ordinance. In this case, and in all but “exceptional” cases according to the

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As avid readers of this blog will note, a few weeks back we commented on an opinion from the Texas Supreme Court compelling arbitration in a defamation case against Dillards by a former employee. We speculated (and continue to speculate) that the Court may have indicated that an arbitration agreement which allowed for unilateral modification could be considered illusory, based on the following language: The arbitration agreement and the 2000 rule

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The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited (by us anyway) opinion in the Buckeye Check Cashing Case today. The majority opinion (link is to .pdf version), written by Justice Scalia for a 7-1 majority (Alito did not participate), reverses a decision by the Florida Supreme Court which held that a court, and not an arbitrator, must determine whether or not a contract between a check cashing company and consumers was an illegal violation of

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