May 6, 2016 in Case Summaries

Assisted by trial counsel Ken Chaiken and appellate co-counsel Carl Cecere, Jeff Levinger convinced the Dallas Court of Appeals to grant mandamus relief compelling the trial court to set aside its order granting a new trial in a hotly-contested real estate dispute. Following a week-long trial, a Dallas County jury found that Levinger PC clients Douglas Hickok and VSDH Vaquero Venture did not defraud or breach their contract with the plaintiffs. The trial court, however, granted the plaintiffs a new trial, finding that Vaquero’s trial counsel had violated Texas Disciplinary Rule 3.08 by acting as both an advocate and a witness at trial. Invoking the recent Texas Supreme Court trilogy of cases allowing mandamus review of orders granting new trials, Hickok and Vaquero claimed that a purported violation of Rule 3.08 was not a legally appropriate basis for granting a new trial. The Court of Appeals agreed, and ordered the trial court to render a take-nothing judgment on the jury’s verdict. In re VSDH Vaquero Venture, Ltd., No. 05-15-0513-CV, 2016 WL 2621073 (Tex. App.-Dallas May 6, 2016, pet. denied).

Courts: Texas Intermediate Appellate Courts
Subject Matter: Ethics & Professional Malpractice, Procedural & Evidentiary Issues

May 3, 2016 in Case Summaries

Jeff Levinger successfully represented the City of McKinney in its appeal of a judgment of over $9,000,000 stemming from a developer’s claim that the City had committed an “inverse condemnation” by violating a restriction in a deed. In its 2009 lawsuit, Eldorado Land Company contended that the City’s construction of a library on a portion of a 32 acre tract that Eldorado had conveyed to the City for use as a community park violated the deed restriction, which provided that the property could be used only as a “park and recreational facility.” The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of El Dorado on the liability issue, and a jury assessed damages of over $7,500,000 (exclusive of interest), representing the difference in the property’s value with and without its deed and zoning restrictions. In reversing the summary judgment on liability and rendering a take-nothing in favor of the City, the Court of Appeals held that the City’s community library fit squarely within the “plain, ordinary, and generally accepted meaning” of a park and recreational facility, and thus did not violate the restriction in the deed. City of McKinney v. Eldorado Land Co., LP, No. 05-15-00067-CV, 2016 WL 2349371 (Tex. App.-Dallas May 3, 2016, pet. denied).

Courts:Supreme Court of Texas, Texas Intermediate Appellate Courts
Subject Matter: Business Litigation, Oil & Gas/Real Estate

March 14, 2016 in Case Summaries

Working closely with trial counsel from the Houston firm of Abraham Watkins, Jeff Levinger first persuaded the trial court to reconsider its dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the parents of a brain-damaged infant, and then convinced the Dallas Court of Appeals to uphold the trial court’s determination on rehearing that one of the two defendants is not a “health care provider” entitled to the protections of Chapter 74 of the Texas Medical Liability Act. In a thorough analysis of the Texas statutes and regulations governing Lutheran Social Services of the South  a child-placing agency that had placed the child with foster parents before the injury-causing incident  the Court held that LSSS had not met its burden of proving that it was “licensed, certified, registered, or chartered by the State of Texas to provide health care.” Meanwhile, the case against the second defendant, a home nursing company, is proceeding in the trial court, after Levinger also persuaded it to reconsider its previous ruling that the plaintiffs’ expert reports were inadequate under Chapter 74. Lutheran Social Services of the South, Inc. v. Blount, No. 05-15-00380-CV, 2016 WL 1019191 (Tex. App.-Dallas Mar. 14, 2016, pet. denied).

Courts: Texas Intermediate Appellate Courts
Subject Matter: Products Liability & Personal Injury

February 29, 2016 in Case Summaries

Jeff Levinger successfully represented Dillon Gage Metals, a large wholesaler of rare coins and bullion, in its long-running dispute with the Gagosian Gallery, a prominent New York art gallery, over the acquisition of 100 bars of gold. In 2009, the Gallery paid $3 million to Stanford Coins & Bullion, a business owned by the now-disgraced financier Allen Stanford, to acquire the gold for a major art installation. SCB, in turn, ordered the gold from Dillon Gage. Before the transaction could be completed, however, SCB was placed into federal receivership, and when the Gallery did not receive the gold, it sued Dillon Gage on the theory that the Gallery was a third-party beneficiary of the sales contract between SCB and Dillon Gage. After a multi-day trial, a jury found that the Gallery was not a third-party beneficiary of the SCB-Dillon Gage contract. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment in favor of Dillon Gage, agreeing with Levinger’s arguments that sufficient evidence supported the verdict and that the jury charge accurately expressed Texas law on third-party beneficiary status. Pre-War Art, Inc. v. Stanford Coins and Bullion, Inc., No. 1510033, 2016 WL 791042 (5th Cir. Feb. 29, 2016).

Courts: Federal Courts of Appeals
Subject Matter: Business Litigation

September 23, 2015 in Case Summaries

In a 2-1 opinion, the Fifth Circuit reversed the summary judgment dismissal of an antitrust suit brought by Levinger PC client Sanger Insurance Agency against HUB International, an insurance broker that sells professional liability and other types of insurance products to veterinarians across the country. Although the Court held that HUB’s anti-competitive conduct was exempt from federal antitrust scrutiny under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, it revived Sanger’s claims under the Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act and various common law theories and remanded them for trial. Over the dissent of Judge Edith Jones, Judges Gregg Costa and Jerry Smith held that Sanger had established that it was sufficiently prepared to enter the market for selling veterinary insurance, and thus reversed the district court’s determination that Sanger lacked standing to challenge HUB’s conduct. Sanger Insurance Co. v. HUB Int’l, Ltd., 802 F.3d 732 (5th Cir. 2015)

Courts: Federal Courts of Appeals
Subject Matter: Business Litigation