Results for: immunity

Phillips v. ERCOT addresses a dispute between ERCOT and the liquidating trust of Entrust Energy, a supplier of electriciity to end users, who went into bankruptcy after receiving a large bill in the wake of Winter Storm Uri. In resolving … Continue reading

By a 9-7 margin, the full Fifth Circuit held that qualified immunity barred the wrongful-arrest claims of a Laredo “citizen-journalist.” Villarreal v. City of Laredo, No. 20-40359 (Jan. 23, 2024). The breakdown of votes appears below:

Whatever your views of the remarkable civil-rights issue presented by Wilson v. Midland County (the intersection between some highly technical immunity rules and the bizarre injustice of a county employee working simultaneously for the prosecution and the courts), one can … Continue reading

The Chitimacha Indian tribe owns a casino. The casino’s former CFO sued the tribe for allegedly violating his civil rights by reporting him to law enforcement. He sued in state court, the defendants removed, and the district judge both denied … Continue reading

For those who had doubts about the matter, Foley Bey v. Prator confirms that the search of a fez is protected by qualified immunity if conducted as part of courthouse security, notwithstanding the plaintiffs’ appeal to the U.S.-Morocco Friendship Treaty of … Continue reading

A surprising amount of case law addresses not whether a particular legal conclusion is correct, but whether it is “correct enough”–qualified immunity, for example, as well as mandamus cases about whether a “clear error” occurred in applying the law. Another … Continue reading

The plaintiffs in Lee v. Andrew Lawrence Collection LLC sought to register the trademark “THEEILOVE” – a phrase associated with the alma mater of Jackson State University. Then they sued that university’s licensing agent and some licensees. The defendants successfully … Continue reading

Preble-Rich, a Haitian company, had a contract with a Haitian government agency to deliver fuel. A payment dispute developed and Preble-Rich started an arbitration in New York, pursuant to a broad clause in the parties’ contract (“In the event of … Continue reading

Walmart sued the U.S. government, seeking declaratory judgments on several issues about the enforcement of laws related to opioids. In the meantime, the the US brought an enforcement action against Walmart in Delaware. The panel in Walmart, Inc. v. U.S. … Continue reading

The Fifth Circuit recently released its opinion on the emergency-stay motions of early September in the high-profile challenge to Texas’s “heartbeat law,” Whole Womens Health v. Jackson, No. 21-50792 (Sept. 10, 2021). In addition to identifying problems with the application … Continue reading

The plaintiffs in Quadvest LP v. San Jacinto River Auth. alleged that a state-created river authority violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by unreasonably restraining the market for wholesale raw water in Montgomery County. Procedurally, the Fifth Circuit concluded … Continue reading

Recent orders set these matters for en banc reconsideration: US v. Dubin, in which the panel held: “An issue of first impression for our court is whether David Dubin’s fraudulently billing Medicaid for services not rendered constitutes an illegal ‘use’ … Continue reading

In Williams v. Reeves, 953 F.3d 729 (5th Cir. 2020), “[t]he plaintiffs in this lawsuit are low-income African-American women whose children attend public schools in Mississippi. They filed suit against multiple state officials in 2017, alleging that the current version … Continue reading

The Fifth Circuit found that the Ex Parte Young exception to Eleventh-Amendment immunity (Mr. Young appears to the right) did not apply to the Texas Attorney General’s potential enforcement of a statute that was in conflict with a City of … Continue reading

In the 1200s, Henry III was protected from suit by sovereign immunity, as chronicled by the prolific Bracton; In the 1780s, “Brutus,” the Anti-Federalist, debated with Alexander Hamilton about whether the Constitution would undermine sovereign immunity by allowing debilitating federal-court lawsuits against … Continue reading

Attorney Martinez sued another law firm (“HLG”) for various torts related to the firm contacting his clients about alleged overbilling. The firm asserted absolute immiunity as a defense and the Fifth Circuit agreed, in a fact-specific holding, that the evidence … Continue reading

A set of “kaleidoscopic claims” about the Houston ISD’s contracting process produced several RICO holdings of note in Ramirez Group v. Houston ISD, No. 13-20753 (May 18, 2015): To show the requisite injury, “[a] plaintiff need not show that the other … Continue reading

Recent opinions from the Fifth Circuit cover all of the basic elements of claims under Section 1 and Section 2 of the Sherman Act, as well as other issues in antitrust law. For further reference, see the jury instructions and questions from Retractable Technologies, Inc. v. … Continue reading

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