East Texas: Law Professor’s Dream
April 27th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Normally here at the Observer blog we cover the law-making, not the litigating. Then again, we weren’t aware that little Marshall, Texas, was home to the “rocket-docket,” where pirates and trolls roamed the courts looking for treasure. Turns out, Marshall’s become the patent litigation capital of the country.
This week’s example was a dubious-seeming lawsuit against Apple claiming “willful and deliberate” patent infringement. The suit was brought by a little-known intellectual property agency, which bought an old patent and is trying to squeeze Apple to see if it can get a settlement (details at Apple Insider).
What’s really interesting is the prominence of Marshall, pop. 25,000, in the legal field. Turns out the dailies wrote a flurry of stories about the transformation of the town’s court a while back. In one, the Dallas Morning-News reported that companies were coming to East Texas because the court so efficiently handles patent cases — usually in half the time, and many less billable hours, than a normal court. The judge for the East Texas District is also known for his expertise in these cases. Thanks to a quirk of federal law, infringement suits across the country can be filed in pretty much any court the plaintiff wants.
Weird.
And while we’re in East Texas, this story out of Beaumont looks primed to go national, after the Wall Street Journal blog picked it up:
A new weekly legal newspaper described as being a “propaganda sheet” for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote lawsuit reform is embroiled in a court fight over its journalistic integrity.
Brent Coon, a personal injury attorney, accuses a reporter and an editor with the Southeast Texas Record of trying to tamper with jury selection in an asbestos-related death case he was set to try earlier this month.
Coon described the Southeast Texas Record as a “propaganda sheet” and a “mouthpiece” for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that doesn’t merit Constitutional protections. It only offers biased stories and editorials maligning personal injury lawsuits filed against companies, he said.
Why Beaumont? The WSJ blog explains, “In 2006, the American Tort Reform Association named all of them (Beaumont and two other towns) ‘Judicial Hellholes,’ areas where juries award large verdicts for plaintiffs.” So that’s where those chamber dues go.
