Over the past several months, I’ve been tracking the explosion of cases where a defendant uses Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) as a defense to a misappropriation of trade secrets claim under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA).  The Beaumont Court of Appeals case in Callison v. C&C Pers., LLC, No. 09-19-00014-CV, 2019 WL 3022548(Tex. App.–Beaumont July 11, 2019, no pet. h.) is another one of those…

The Dallas Court of Appeals opinion in Damonte v. Hallmark Financial Services, Inc., No. 05-18-00874-CV, 2019 WL 3059884 (Tex. App.–Dallas July 12, 2019) is the latest in a string of cases restricting the application of the Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA).  In this case, Hallmark sued Damonte, its former employee, for breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, and violations of the Texas Uniform Trade Secret Act (TUTSA…

As previously discussed, the current version of the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) can apply in a variety of commercial litigation cases.  One of the exceptions to application of the TCPA, though, is the commercial speech exemption.  Under the commercial speech exemption, the TCPA does not apply if (1) the defendant was primarily engaged in the business of selling or leasing goods, (2) the defendant made the statement or engaged in the conduct…

Almost every trade secrets case involves some sort of request for injunctive relief prohibiting the alleged infringer from using the trade secrets at issue.  If the court grants the request for injunctive relief and you are the party accused of misappropriating the trade secret, you want to have some specificity in the court’s order so you can know the specific trade secrets you a prohibiting from using.…

Texas Tech School of Law professor and my former colleague at Brackett & Ellis Rob Sherwin co-wrote a new law review article with Haynes and Boone attorney Laura Lee Prather.   The article discusses the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) and the changes to the TCPA that went into effect on September 1, 2019.…

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how the Fort Worth Court of Appeals restricted the scope of Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) by determining that the “common interest” in the definition of “right of association” under the TCPA requires interests that are “shared by the public or at least a group.”  This is a holding that arguably conflicts with other courts of appeals that have held…

As discussed in previous posts, multiple Texas cases have held that Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) applies in most commercial litigation cases. In a recent string of decisions, though, the Dallas Court of Appeals is attempting to restrict the application of the TCPA to commercial litigation cases.…