Nacogdoches County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz issued a temporary restraining order against TransCanada Tuesday, preventing the company from continuing construction of the southern leg of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline crossing Mike Bishop’s land. I met Bishop a few weeks ago at his place in Douglass, a tiny…
In the fall of 2009, attorney Patrick Robert Simon was approached by a man who needed some financial planning advice. The man was making a healthy living, by trafficking illegal drugs, but was prepping for an extended stay in prison, for trafficking illegal drugs. Call it an occupational hazard. The…
In April, Jabin Bogan was transporting 268,000 rounds of ammunition from Tennessee to a gun shop in Arizona when he took a wrong turn. “He told me he was coming from the warehouse, missed a turn, and was stuck one-way going south,” Bogan’s manager at Demco Express, Dennis Mekenye, told…
Back in April, Raymond Jackson and James Curtis Williams once again found themselves in a Dallas County courtroom, some 28 years after they were sentenced to life in prison the 1983 rape and assault of a 26-year-old Highland Park woman. This time, the mood was different. DNA evidence proved that…
Because the Tom Corea saga just wasn’t train-wrecky enough, we bring you another dispatch from Ellis County, where, if you’ll recall, Corea was recently indicted for attacking his wife and interfering with a 911 call. This incident occurred on October 28, 2011 and involves Corea’s wife, 41-year-old Jennifer Corea. According…
In the summer of 2004 crews began filming Easy Rider: The Search Continues, a sequel the cult 1969 film that tracked Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as they made their long, drug-soaked motorcycle ride from L.A. to New Orleans. Never mind that Fonda and Hopper’s characters died at the end…
Back in October, Demitri Brown and Donna Evans-Brown filed a not-at-all-frivolous lawsuit in Dallas County District Court claiming that Christopher Bridges, aka Ludacris, had stolen their trademark and illegally used it to build his Atlanta-based record label/entertainment empire. The dispute centers around “Disturb the Peace,” which Brown trademarked through the…
In June of this year, Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton sued a number of people who dropped by their rural farmhouse in Liberty County last year, people who mistakenly believed the couple had a mass grave containing dozens of dismembered bodies on the property. Those people included the Liberty County…
There is little doubt that Brian Loncar is a shrewd businessman. One doesn’t dub oneself the “Strong Arm,” create a Bat Signal-like image of a flexing appendage, and create a minor personal injury litigation empire without some measure of marketing savvy. But Loncar is also known to blur ethical lines…
For those of you who haven’t been keeping score at home, a quick recap. Tom Corea is a disbarred, Klonopin-addicted trial lawyer accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his client’s money, with which he bought luxury cars, a half-million-dollar RV, a quarter horse operation and other things…
In recent months, Hostess’ corporate leaders have struggled valiantly to save the Twinkie. That they didn’t succeed goes to show not that the company utterly failed to adapt to a changing market but that they simply couldn’t overcome the mighty power of a union bent on destroying an American icon…
On March 30, 2007, 57-year-old Margrit Long went to the Center for Integrative Medicine in Portland, Oregon. She was given an intravenous dose of colchicine, a drug developed to treat gout but commonly prescribed, as in Long’s case, to treat neck and back pain. She’d been receiving the treatment for…
The last time Tom Corea was in Judge Michael Snipes’ Dallas County courtroom, he had just finished trashing his former Design District office and drawing amateurish penis graffiti on the walls in permanent marker. For that, Snipes revoked Corea’s bond and sent him back to jail. Corea, who stands accused…
Danielle Dawn Smalley was with her boyfriend at her Kaufman County home in August 1996 when a spark from her father’s truck ignited a cloud of butane escaping from a corroded pipeline. The explosion killed the 17-year-old couple instantaneously. Smalley’s death would ultimately lead a jury to order Koch Industries,…
The weirdness surrounding disgraced attorney Tom Corea has several levels. There’s the obvious one, in which he was sued by several former clients who said he’d stolen their settlement money; indicted for felony theft by the Dallas County District Attorney’s office; had disbarment proceedings initiated against him by the State…
Hostess went to a bankruptcy hearing in New York today for what, judging from the run on Twinkies and a general sense of mourning, would be the final blow to the struggling snack cake maker. The company filed a petition Friday asking for permission to liquidate, closing its manufacturing plant…
In October 2011, a rogue spark ignited a cloud of flammable gas at Magnablend’s chemical processing facility in Waxahachie, setting off a massive fire that burned for several days. The company pledged to rebuild the destroyed plant at the site of the abandoned Superconducting Super Collider. The EPA declared that…
I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it’s true: the argument between the state of Texas and Planned Parenthood over the Women’s Health Program looks like it’s never, ever going to end. This case has dragged itself through state courts, federal courts, and back down to…
Howard Marcon had just finished stowing shopping bags in his trunk following a trip to the Russell Stover store in Oklahoma City when he was stopped by a man approaching from the front of his car. The man was dressed in all black and wore a mask, and he demanded…
Brian Jaynes has made something of a name for himself in the world of low-budget horror films. Over the past three years, the East Texas filmmaker has helmed a string of cult successes, starting with Boggy Creek, about a bloodthirsty Sasquatch. That was followed last year by Humans vs Zombies…
Back in March, Derek Madrigal, a 21-year-old student at Brookhaven Community College, was viciously beaten and stabbed by around a dozen people after he tried to defend a woman who was being harassed. The group of men beat Madrigal with cooler lids and stabbed him nine times, landing him in…
When attorney Tom Corea moved his now-defunct legal practice into a 10,000-square foot Design District warehouse a year ago, he wasted little time in adding the Corea touch. He installed ostentatious mahogany-and-marble counters; covered the sidewalk with a glued-on rubber tread; and, in several rooms, installed Hugh Hefner-caliber deep scarlet…
