Texas Tribune Daily Brief
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| In the Gulf, Fears Over Failing Bolts on Oil Rigs Persist |  | Federal officials are trying to determine whether bolts used on undersea oil and gas equipment are at risk of breaking and creating a "catastrophic failure" similar to the scale of BP's Deepwater Horizon spill six years ago. "Due to the lack of formalized reporting, we don't think we know how vast and deep this could go," said Allyson Anderson Book, associate director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees offshore drilling. "But based on what we're seeing, we're concerned."
James Osborne, Houston Chronicle 07/20/2016    | | Read Article: Houston Chronicle |
| Judge Reignites Debate Over Researching Jurors Online | | Mining prospective jurors' Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts is common practice for many attorneys looking to spot biases that might cost their clients a fair trial. The ABA has said the searches are ethical. Some judges have deemed the online searches invasive and banned them. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, raising concerns about prospective jurors' privacy in a copyright case, said attorneys could research the jury panel, but would have to inform it in advance of the scope of the online sleuthing and give the potential jurors a chance to change online privacy settings. Otherwise, they had to agree to forgo the searches.
Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle 07/20/2016 | | Read Article: San Francisco Chronicle |
| Mother Suing Owners of Abandoned Apartment Complex | | In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the 295th State District Court, Rocio Perez is seeking more than $1 million from 1600 Avenue M LLC in the death of her daughter, Karen Perez. The abandoned apartment complex in the 1600 block of Avenue M in South Houston where Karen Perez died is owned by 1600 Avenue M LLC, according to court documents.
Will Axford, Houston Chronicle 07/19/2016 | | Read Article: Houston Chronicle |
| Austin Pastor Accused of Child Sex Abuse Named in Lawsuit | | A lawsuit has been filed against a pastor from Austin who is criminally charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child. The lawsuit was filed by the family of the teenage girl who was allegedly sexually abused by the 69-year-old pastor. According to the lawsuit, the child was subjected to repeated sexual abuse by the pastor beginning in 2014, when she was 13 years old. The lawsuit names as defendants the pastor, his wife and First Baptist Church in east Austin.
Katie Hall, Austin American Statesman 07/18/2016 | | Read Article: Austin American Statesman |
| PG&E Can't Strike Emails, Docs In Pipeline Blast Trial | | A California federal judge on Tuesday denied a request by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to strike government exhibits and testimony from a criminal trial over the deadly 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. Earlier this month, PG&E asked U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson to toss out evidence prosecutors introduced at trial while questioning a former employee who the company said admitted to having no firsthand knowledge of the documents. The utility said they were inadmissible and could wrongly implicate the company in the incident.
Kurt Orzeck, Law360.com 07/20/2016 | | Read Article: Law360.com |
| Volkswagen Scandal Reaches All the Way to the Top, Lawsuits Say | | Three attorneys general on Tuesday directly challenged Volkswagen's defense over its emissions deception, calling the decision to thwart pollution tests an orchestrated fraud that lasted more than a decade, involved dozens of engineers and managers and reached deep into the company's boardroom. The accusations, leveled in lawsuits by New York, Massachusetts and Maryland, contradict Volkswagen's portrayal of the deception, representing a new threat to the carmaker's finances, reputation and management.
JACK EWING and HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times 07/20/2016 | | Read Article: The New York Times |
| Smoker's Widower Awarded $1.5M In Engle Trial | | A Florida jury on Tuesday awarded $1.5 million to a man whose wife died of lung cancer after decades of smoking, but found that Philip Morris USA Inc. was only partially liable for her death and let R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. escape liability completely. Philip Morris was 25 percent responsible for Virginia Varner's death, and Varner herself bears the other 75 percent of the blame, jurors found.
Brandon Lowrey, Law360.com 07/20/2016 | | Read Article: Law360.com |
| WWE Faces Lawsuit Alleging It Concealed Dangers of Head Injuries | | More than 50 professional wrestlers have filed a lawsuit against the World Wrestling Entertainment alleging that the group failed to them about the dangers of repeated head injuries. According to the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Connecticut, the WWE hid the dangers of repeated injuries to the head. The lawsuit was filed by 53 wrestlers who allege their head injuries led to "chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative brain disease that has been diagnosed in many deceased athletes and at least two professional wrestlers."
Bob Hohler, Boston Globe 07/18/2016 | | Read Article: Boston Globe |
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