Parker County Blog

Politics is politics, and incumbents running for re-election in conservative Parker County, Texas, where the local economy is fueled entirely by shale-gas production, want to look like champions of the industry. But what if you're a judge? And what if, at the very moment you put up fliers of Rush Limbaugh's beaming mug, asking, "Why is Rush Limbaugh congratulating Parker County's own Trey Loftin," and it's because he thinks you donkey-punched "Obama's EPA" in a watershed fracking lawsuit ... what if, at that very moment, you're still supposed to be the impartial arbiter in that case?

Should Steve Lipsky, who is a party to the lawsuit, and who Loftin has ruled against repeatedly, have much faith in a judge who brags about these rulings as though they're some sort of ideological litmus test burnishing his conservative credentials?

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Monica Fuentes

Tricky work deciding who gets the protections of a journalist in court. In the case of a natural gas production company suing a Parker County man who blames it for contaminating his water well, state district Judge Trey Loftin attempted to suss it out in a recent order compelling fracking blogger Sharon Wilson (known as Texas Sharon) to cough up personal emails pertaining to the case.

"They have this thing in there where I have to turn over all communications from 2005 with the word 'range' in it," Wilson says. "And that's absurd. They're trying to build their intelligence database, and I'm not gonna turn over a bunch of people who might have emailed me a newspaper article."

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ABC News

Billy Frederick Allen

Billy Frederick Allen served 26 years in prison for two drug-related murders in University Park. In February 2009, the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin freed him, citing ineffective lawyering and "newly discovered evidence" that gave them "no confidence in the outcome of the trial."

In March 2010, Allen filed for compensation from the state under the newly enacted Tim Cole Act, which provides $160,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment to be split between an upfront, lump-sum payment and a yearly annuity. He was due some $2 million. But the Texas Comptroller said the court's ruling wasn't enough. It didn't constitute "actual innocence," as defined in the letter of the law.

Allen's attorneys, Kris Moore and Kevin Glasheen, took his case to the Texas Supreme Court, the final arbiter, and last week, they won, in effect opening up the statutory compensation scheme to a new class of exonerees: Those without the incontrovertible silver bullet of DNA evidence.

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Image via Flickr

When lawyers fight, it looks exactly like this.

The practice of law is a subtle art, one which requires finesse, tact, and skill. Sometimes too, we've learned, it necessitates calling the other guy's lawyer a pansy, an asshole, an ignorant slut, and threatening, not very subtly, to sodomize him. (What's with lawyers and threatening to sodomize people?)

Martin Sweeney, formerly of Cozen O'Connor, may not have a job anymore, but he's certainly earned a place in some sort of legal email hall of fame. Above The Law brings us this heartwarming tale of Sweeney and the opposing counsel, a guy named Chad Arnette, who's with Kelly Hart & Hallman.

As ATL explains, the two men were trying to schedule a deposition. Scheduling is so hard, isn't it? Things got tangled. Sweeney got frustrated. He called "bullshit" and warned Arnette: "Don't jack with me."

"Not sure where that came from," Arnette replied. "But if you are committed to getting us dates in March then all will be swell."

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Heritage Auctions

Mongolian officials claim this dinosaur may have been taken from their country illegally. Looks more Kazakh to me.

My 3-year-old son is crushed. Yesterday, his dad was about $1,052,480 shy of purchasing a 75 percent complete fossil skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, sold by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. Or at least I would have been had I put in a bid.

It's just as well, though, because whoever purchased the 70-million-year-old specimen has been thrust into an international legal and paleontological shit storm that played out dramatically during yesterday's auction.

It started late last week, when the director of the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs, writing on behalf of Mongolia's president, called for the cancellation of Sunday's auction. The dinosaur, he wrote, actually belongs to his country.

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It's been three years, almost to the day, since 12 people were injured -- one of them permanently paralyzed -- after the Dallas Cowboys' 88,000-square-foot, steel-and-fabric practice facility collapsed under high winds.

Since then there have been lawsuits, federal investigations and detailed engineering explanations. Today, we're reminded that it wasn't all Jerry Jones' fault.

The Associated Press is reporting that Enrique Tabak, the engineer who signed off on plans for the facility, has agreed to pay a $12,040 settlement with the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. The consent order notes that Tabak's plans "were not prepared in a careful and diligent manner."

Stephen Benavides

Stephen Benavides, the Occupy Dallas protester arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer during a scuffle at the November Bank of America protest, has signed a plea deal that reduces the felony to a misdemeanor resisting-arrest charge and keeps him out of jail.

Benavides pleaded no contest to the assault charge and guilty to the resisting offense in exchange for six months deferred community supervision and a $500 fine. Benavides tells Unfair Park prosecutors also dismissed a handful of other misdemeanor charges from different dates, including one for allegedly making terroristic threats and another for resisting arrest. The agreement, he claims, doesn't come without strings attached.

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Justice.

Dallas black activist the Reverend Ronald Wright went home last Friday expecting to be greeted happily by his 2-year-old German shepherd Sadie. When he opened the door, the house was silent. He immediately knew something was wrong.

When he went to the backyard, he saw his dog lying on the ground. She wasn't moving. When he picked her up, blood had congealed around her mouth. She was dead.

A friend with animal control said Sadie was most likely poisoned. Wright believes Sadie was collateral damage, her death retribution for his statements he made last week on Darius Ewing's $100,000 bail, which Wright called excessive. Ewing, a young black man, was arrested after the April 4 hanging and burning of Justice, a stray lab-terrier puppy. Justice died nine days later while receiving burn treatment. Wright said some people were given lower bails after murdering people, angering many animal lovers.

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via Flickr

Aftermath Inc. refers to itself as a "biohazard restoration company", more commonly known as crime-scene cleanup: The company's employees go in after murders, suicides, injuries, hoarding cases and other seriously unpleasant situations. But now three of their Texas employees are being sued in Dallas County district court, where five families claim that after their loved ones died, the Aftermath cleaning crews seriously deceived them about the cost of their services, charged for hours in which they'd worked for 15 minutes and sat around for 45, and billed their parent company for cleaning supplies they'd never actually touched.

Jeffrey Mayes, Cynthia Karle and Ricardo Donato all had family members who died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Justine Ingels and Crystal Dopkins had loved ones who were found dead several days after decomposition began. All of them hired Aftermath, an Illinois-based company with offices all over the United States.

The suit claims that Dawn Wilcox, Brian Cox and Justin Foster were hired to do cleanup for all the plaintiffs in 2011 or 2012. In each case, the family members ended up receiving staggering bills from Aftermath, which they claim was the result of fraudulent billing from the trio.

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The Nasher Sculpture Center and the developers of the Museum Tower project are continuing to hammer out their white light, white heat debacle behind closed doors. They recently hired a mediator in lawyer Tom Luce, who promptly asked both sides to quit talking to the media already.

Above, however, you will see a video from George Tomasovic, a First Battalion Chief with the fire department, a licensed CPA and, most importantly, the chairman of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund's trustee board. In the video, Tomasovic, without making reference to any particular huge public relations disaster, insists that the pension fund's "alternative investments" are sound and represent an overall commitment to this great country of ours. Anyone who disagrees, he adds, is guilty of "old-fashioned, out-of-date thinking."

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