Texas Insurance Defense and Litigation

Texas Supreme Court Justice under investigation for accepting illegal gift of discounted legal services

This story is reported in Law.com:

Travis County, Texas, prosecutors are investigating whether Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht received an illegal gift when Jackson Walker discounted its legal fees for representing him in his 2006 fight with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

On July 24, the citizens' group Texas Watch filed complaints about the reduction in Hecht's legal bill with three agencies, including the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney's Office, which investigates and prosecutes alleged wrongdoing by public officials. Jackson Walker represented Hecht in his successful challenge of the judicial conduct commission's public admonition of him for his support in 2005 of then-White House counsel Harriet Miers' failed nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Miers has been a member of Locke Liddell & Sapp in Dallas since May.

[More at the link...]

Just avoid jury duty ...

The New York Times, in a fluffy piece that provides few details, notes that people do not like to show up for jury duty.  The story notes that nationally, only about 45 percent of the people summoned for jury duty show up.  The story begins with an account of deputy sheriffs serving random people with summonses outside a Wal-Mart and a Food Lion store, requiring them to appear in less than an hour at the courthouse for jury duty.

DC Court strikes regulations increasing driving hours

A federal court sitting in Washington DC has struck the administration’s rules increasing the administration’s 2005 decision to increase the maximum driving hours of truck drivers.  The Court indicated the FMCSA had ignored the results of a study, which indicated a substantially higher risk of fatigue-related accidents in the extra hours of service allowed by the new rules.

The hours had been increased from 60 to 77 over a period of seven consecutive days, and from 70 to 88 over eight consecutive days.

For more, go to these links:

New York Times article
Transport Topics Online