It’s been close to five months since Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins went after Mortgage Electronic Registration System over what Watkins claimed were “tens of millions in uncollected filing fees owed to the citizens of Dallas County.” But since then little has been said about the suit, which was…
This case has rattled through the halls of federal and appeals courts for eight years now — the Ghost of War on Christmas Past, a moaning hydra who’s been sliced, diced and now winnowed down to one remaining question on which a magistrate says three Plano families may proceed: In…
Seven months after citing an uncommon application of the law of adverse possession and moving into an abandoned suburban homestead in Flower Mound, Ken Robinson is on his way out. At a hearing this morning regarding his recent eviction notice, a Flower Mound judge ruled that Robinson, who did not…
The city of Dallas wants Municipal Judge Phyllis Lister Brown to leave her job as soon as possible, as evidenced by the city attorney’s latest petition, which says the temporary restraining order allowing her to keep working is “void.” Judge Brown, a municipal judge for 17 years, announced her candidacy…
Google the phrase “SponsorMonsters,” and the first thing that pops up is an item from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving website touting the John Carpenter Freeway-based organization’s partnership with it. As in: “For 2011, Sponsor Monsters donated their lead sponsorship position to MADD and will represent MADD National in order…
Surely you recall for the tale of The Man With the $16 House, a September cover story about Kenneth Robinson, who occupied a $340,000 Flower Mound home for the cost of filing paperwork with Denton County. Now, Robinson faces eviction from the place that’s been his home since June, according…
Every once in a while, amid the stacks of semi-literate, pro se habeas corpus petitions, trademark suits and product liability complaints, there comes a federal filing so disturbing, so completely awful, that it leaves the reader with nothing but questions. This week, it’s Danny Cantu v. The City of Dallas…
The saga of Texas’s brand-new, Rick-Perry approved sonogram law continues. First, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a preliminary injunction issued by Judge Sam Sparks and allowed the law to go into effect. (That law, just to refresh, requires women seeking an abortion to look at a sonogram,…
This little nugget slipped past us last week — somehow, it didn’t make headlines north of Austin — but it draws the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality into a legal tussle with the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project over pollution permits it issued to Dallas-based electric utility Luminant…
Back in November U.S. District Judges Orlando Garcia and Xavier Rodriguez down in San Antonio drew up new congressional and state House and Senate maps, since they so hated the ones submitted by the Texas Legislature. The judges claimed the state willfully ignored the state’s growing Hispanic population, and their…
Three days before Christmas we noted that Anland North, a limited partnership controlled by Ross Perot Jr. and his Hillwood, was threatening to block some Dallas Stars and Dallas Mavericks season-ticket holders from parking in their already-paid-for parking spots at the American Airlines Center. The only thing that kept Junior…
Just four days after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rick Perry’s favorite law — the one requiring women to get a sonogram, listen to a fetal heartbeat and hear a verbal description from a doctor of the sonogram image before they can get an abortion — is…
Back in September, when the city passed its ordinance requiring commercial solid waste companies to dump in South Dallas’s McCommas Bluff landfill, the proposal drew an unexpected foe: a group of Paul Quinn College students, led by school president Michael Sorrell, who protested in front of City Hall to remind…
For years Flashdancer Cabaret — the topless joint that sits on E. Randol Mill just across the freeway from Cowboys Stadium and the Ballpark in Arlington, or so I’ve been told — has been at odds with the city and state, which have tried their best to shutter the joint…
In a 2010 lawsuit filed in federal court, Dr. Tiffiney Barfield-Cottledge claimed the University of North Texas lobbed her application for a faculty position into the dustbin because she’s black. And because they were retaliating against her for allegedly griping to the media. In recompense, she sought a $250,000 settlement…
If you have but a single can or bottle marked “Dublin Dr Pepper,” don’t open it. It’s a collector’s item as of this very moment. That’s because as of 5 p.m. today there is no more Dublin Dr Pepper: From here on out, per a settlement agreement just announced in…
Texas’s dandy new “sonogram law” — which requires abortion-seeking women to look at a sonogram, hear a description of it from her doctor and listen to a fetal heartbeat — is legal, a federal court ruled today. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary injunction, issued by…
Dallas backup wide receiver Kevin Ogletree was planning on stiffing his housesitter for more than $16,000 in expenses incurred while he was out of town during the lockout, according to a lawsuit filed in Dallas County on December 30 by the son of longtime Cowboys strength and conditioning coach Joe…
Teresa Hawthorne, the Dallas County judge who ruled that the state’s death penalty statute was unconstitutional, must recuse herself from a capital murder case, a judge ruled today. Hawthorne was presiding over the capital murder trial of Roderick Harris, who’s accused of killing brothers Alfredo and Carlos Gallardo during a…
Radioactive-waste-burying, Rick Perry-money-giving, Swift-Boating Harold Simmons begins his new year with a federal lawsuit brought by a shareholder in LBJ Freeway-HQ’d Titanium Metals Corporation, where Simmons serves as chairman of the board — the same board also named as defendants in the suit dropped off Friday at the Earle Cabell…
A Dallas-based strip-club chain facing a class-action lawsuit tried to compel its dancers not to join that legal action — and even fired a woman who wouldn’t comply, or so the strippers claim. In a motion filed earlier this month, the dancers also claim that the clubs foisted the agreements…
Curious the things that land in the in-box. Like this, for instance: a statement from attorney Larry Friedman on behalf of Pilar Sanders, who, for now at least, is married to Deion Sanders. I say “for now” because not one hour ago TMZ noted that the former Dallas Cowboy has…
