NEWS

Congratulations to Dana Levy, and trial counsel Jason Stephens, on successfully defeating a mandamus petition filed in the Dallas Court of Appeals, seeking relief from the trial court’s striking of a responsible third party designation.  The defendant, an owner of a gas facility where our client was injured, tried to designate and assign blame to a former minority-interest owner and contract-operator of the property.  The court of appeals held that the minority owner, who sold its interest in the premises to the majority owner prior to the personal injuries at issue, owed no duty to the injured plaintiff because, under premises-liability principles, any such duty passed to the majority owner when its interest was sold.  You can read Dana’s briefing here and the court’s majority opinion here.

DP&S is proud to announce the addition of Caren I. Friedman as a partner in the firm’s Santa Fe office.  After serving as a judicial clerk in the Tenth Circuit, and later specializing in appellate practice, Caren has garnered a reputation as one of New Mexico’s top appellate attorneys.  Caren joins colleagues Justin Kaufman and Roz Bienvenu and brings more than two decades of appellate expertise to the firm’s New Mexico office.

Congratulations to Dana Levy, who won an important medical malpractice case in the Texas Supreme Court!  Dana successfully overturned a court of appeals holding that would have required a party to produce an expert report simply for purposes of seeking discovery from a nonparty physician.  The Texas Supreme Court held in In re Turner that the expert-report requirement to proceed with a health-care-liability claim does not apply to a non-party doctor’s deposition when the doctor is a fact witness with knowledge relevant to claims against the defendant Hospital, even if the doctor may also face the possibility of becoming a defendant.  You can read the opinion here.  You can also see Dana’s briefing and argument that led to this fantastic result here and here, respectively.

DP&S associate, Jessica Foster, presented argument Thursday in the Texas Supreme Court in Cherlyn Bethel, et al. v. Quilling, Selander, Lownds, Winslett & Moser, P.C., a case that presents important issues regarding the scope of Rule 91a, a relatively new early-dismissal procedural rule, and attorney immunity, in a case that involves the destruction of crucial evidence.  You can see Jessica’s briefing here, and you can watch her argument here.

Congratulations to DP&S partner, Kirk Pittard, along with a trial team that included Steve Laird, Seth McCloskey, Tim Brandenburg, and Pete Kestner, who, after a two-week trial, secured a $12.5 million settlement in an 18-wheeler-motorcycle collision case in Rockwall County.  The collision occurred when the plaintiff, who was alleged to be going 60 m.p.h. in a 40 m.p.h. zone and attempting to time the green light as he entered the intersection, hit a Mercer 18-wheeler that had run a red light.  The plaintiff, who survived the accident, is now blind and paralyzed.  It was an all-hands-on-deck effort that led to the settlement just before closing argument.

Congratulations to David Harris, Craig Sico, and Louie Cook of Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP on a $40.5 million verdict in a wrongful death trucking case in Santa Fe County against Werner Enterprises.  DP&S’s Justin Kaufman and Rosalind Bienvenu assisted on the trial team through the course of the 2-week trial.  The jury found Werner, one of the largest trucking companies in the U.S., negligent for causing the death of Kathryn Armijo in a 2017 crash.  The jury also found Werner liable for punitive damages.

According to evidence, Werner, through its own inadequate operations and training programs for its student drivers via Roadmaster Drivers School, had a systematic disregard for basic safety policies and training of new drivers. Werner, a company with more than $2 billion in annual gross revenue, each year hires approximately 4,500 new drivers with no prior truck driving experience. This is the second significant verdict against Werner Enterprises in the past 18 months. In May of 2018, Werner was hit with $89.6 million verdict by a civil jury for systematic safety and training failures in a multiple fatality case involving a student driver. You can read the verdict here.

DP&S partner, Kirk Pittard, recently wrote a law review article that has been published in the Summer 2019 edition of the Texas Tech Law Review concerning the recovery of medical expenses under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 41.0105 subsequent to the 2003 Tort Reform legislation.  See Recovery of Medical Expenses Under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 41.0105 – The Paid or Incurred Statute, 51 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 731 (Summer 2019).

DP&S is proud to announce that, on September 30, 2019, Lana Beverly joined its Dallas office.  Lana brings significant appellate and litigation experience, coming from a litigation boutique that specialized in catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death matters in addition to complex commercial litigation cases.  Lana received her B.A., with distinction, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006, and earned her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 2010. Immediately after law school, Lana was selected to be a judicial clerk for the Honorable Tom Price of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Lana has been recognized by Thomson Reuters in Texas Monthly as a “Texas Rising Star” in 2018 to 2019.

For the second day in a row, DP&S was proud to represent clients before the Texas Supreme Court.  Dana Levy presented argument in In re Comaneche Turner, a case dealing with whether the deposition of a non-party doctor in a medical malpractice case still requires an expert report as a mandatory prerequisite, as if the non-party was, in fact, a party to the case.  You can see Dana’s briefing here, and you can listen to her argument here.

Kirk Pittard presented argument this morning in LaDonna Degan, et al. v. Dallas Police and Fire Pension System Board of Trustees, a case certified to the Texas Supreme Court from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to answer whether certain changes made to the pensioners’ ability to withdraw money from their own accounts violate the Texas Constitution.  You can read the briefing here, and you can watch Kirk’s argument here.