As of June 14, 2019, with certain exceptions, a governmental entity asserting a claim for damages to real or personal property caused by an alleged construction defect in a public building or public work against a contractor, subcontractor, supplier, […]
The “valid-when-made doctrine” is an important component of usury law. It provides that a loan that has a non-usurious interest rate when it is made cannot become usurious if the loan is subsequently transferred to a third party, even if […]
Subchapter C of the Professional Services Procurement Act (Chapter 2254 of the Texas Government Code) has been revised to establish requirements for the procurement of contingent fee contracts for legal services by political subdivisions, including school […]
Once again, reforms to Texas lien law were not enacted into law following the 2019 Texas legislative session. Bills seeking to shorten the statutes of repose applicable to claims against design professionals and contractors and to broadly limit a contractor […]
On January 12, 2020, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced its final rule ("Final Rule") to revise and update the standard for determining "joint employer" status under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) – the federal law […]
The MCS-90 endorsement is one means by which an interstate motor carrier can demonstrate compliance with minimum financial requirements established by federal statute and regulations. The application of this endorsement by the courts, however, has caused […]
While we Americans act in many ways as a single entity—THE United States of America—we are, in a lot of other ways, still a loose affiliation of single states, with separate governments and laws. That was probably just fine in the 1700 […]
In the latest episode of our energy law podcast, we discuss recent guidance from the Texas Supreme Court on interpreting oil-and-gas contracts; cross-jurisdictional differences surrounding the rule of capture and subsurface mineral trespass; and troubling […]
I have written previously about class certification in the oil patch. Frequently the emphasis is around whether the putative class can satisfy Rule 23's commonality and predominance requirements. The recent trend has been toward troubling developments […]
Last year, I wrote about Pennsylvania's departure from Texas on the law surrounding trespass by hydraulic fracturing. As first stated in Coastal Oil & Gas Corp. v. Garza Energy Trust, 268 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. 2008), trespass claims for drainage by […]
The Texas Supreme Court, beginning in 2017, began issuing a number of decisions altering the analysis for the interpretation of oil-and-gas agreements, principally mineral leases and conveyances. I wrote about many of these opinions as they were released […]