Knox Nunnally is a well-known and highly regarded trial lawyer at Vinson & Elkins in Houston. Knox has been writing a series for the Texas Lawyer on tips for trial lawyers, and the latest segment in the series provides a number of common sense tips. Knox makes two particularly insightful points:

[Get] to know all of the people associated with the court at the courthouse. This means you need to know, on a personal level, the clerk of the court, This means you need to know, on a personal level, the clerk of the court, the bailiff, the court reporter and whoever else assists with the trial. . . . during a trial any one of those court personnel could have some contact with the jury. It is always to your advantage if court personnel feel positively about you, because you never know when some gratuitous comment could be made that either advances or sinks your case. These folks also usually prove to be the best shadow jury I have ever known concerning who?s winning and who?s losing during the course of a trial.

Perhaps even more important is the following point, which unfortunately is contrary to the adversarial approach to litigation that has become increasingly common in recent years:

One of the most important tips concerns getting along with opposing counsel. Years of trial combat taught me it is far better to try to get along with the other side rather than allowing everything to become a heated battle. It seems today that so many of our relationships with opposing counsel deteriorate more quickly; cases become almost exclusively a motion practice, with personal recriminations creeping into the pleadings and arguments. I remember a case I tried to a jury verdict (and lost) with Ronald Krist, a truly splendid lawyer. It was a case we fully lost) with Ronald Krist, a truly splendid lawyer. It was a case we fully prepared, took to trial and ultimately settled after the verdict without needing one hearing before the court on any kind of dispute. That is a rare occurrence today. The trial business is tough enough without making it tougher with scorched-earth tactics. It is also true that what goes around, comes around.

Read the entire article. Definite clear thinking from a first rate (and first class) lawyer. Hat tip to the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog for the link to Knox’s article.

Wounded Russian oil company but American debtor-in-possession OAO Yukos has dismissed five banks from its tortious interference lawsuit that it has brought in federal court in Houston in connection with its pending chapter 11 case. Here are the previous posts on the Yukos case.
The lawsuit involves several Western banks alleged involvement in the financing of an auction bid on Yukos’ former production unit called Yuganskneftegaz (“Yugansk”), the Siberian oil giant that represents about 1% of world oil production. In December, the Russian government scheduled an auction of Yugansk to generate proceeds to pay Yukos’ alleged $28 billion tax debt to the government, which prompted Yukos’ to file a chapter 11 case in Houston in an effort to delay the auction. The Russian government went ahead with the auction despite the automatic stay under 11 U.S.C. ß 362 and a Bankruptcy Court TRO enjoining the auction, and Yukos then initiated the lawsuit against a number of Western financial institutions for alleged involvement in financing the winning $9.3 billion auction bid in violatio of the automatic stay and the TRO.
Yukos dropped affiliates of ABN Amro Holding NV, BNP Paribas SA, Calyon, JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Dresdner Kleinwort Wassertein from the lawsuit. Those banks had originally been members of a consortium of Western financial institutions that was prepared to finance an auction bid for Yugansk, but Yukos is now satisfied that these banks had nothing to do with the winning auction bid.
On the other hand, one of the banks that Yukos did not dismiss is Deutsche Bank, which is challenging the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court over Yukos. The hearing on Deutsche Bank’s motion to dismiss the Yukos case is presently scheduled for February 16th in U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Letitia Clark’s Houston courtroom.