Legal News

A Defense Verdict in Marshall? Believe It

By Dan Slater

Since the Law Blog’s birth, we’ve enjoyed keeping tabs on Marshall, Texas, a plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction known for doling out fat verdicts in product liability cases. See LB coverage of Marshall here, here, here and here.

Defense wins are rare in Marshall, and jury verdicts that invalidate patents are even rarer. But on Thursday, both happened. Thomas & Betts, the second-largest maker of electronic connectors in America, won a case against Cooper Industries, its primary competitor. (For patent mavens, the two patents-in-suit related to 15,000 and 25,000 volt-rated couplings used by utilities to distribute power.)

Thomas & Betts was repped by Kaye Scholer’s Alan Fisch, Jason Hoffman and Coke Morgan Stewart, an eighth-year associate who did two cross-examinations and one direct at trial. Local counsel was Sam Baxter of McKool Smith.

Lawyers for Cooper Industries included Fulbright’s Bob Harrell and Brett Govett, as well as lawyers from Morgan Lewis, Ireland Carroll and Jones & Jones.

Correction: It’s since come to our attention, thanks to the Law Blog readership and Michael Smith, who writes the EDTX blog, that in 2006 OutlookSoft won a defense verdict against Hyperion that the asserted patents were both invalid and not infringed. Nor, writes Smith, is this the first defense verdict in Marshall this year - in April, in Sofpool v. Intex, a jury in Judge Everingham’s court found for the defendant in a patent case.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).