Gov. Abbott reappoints all 10 Texas Business Court judges to two-year terms<\/a><\/p>\nAT&T then counterclaimed that Fiberwave violated its contract when it filed suit, alleging it contained confidential information. Fiberwave later removed the confidential information at AT&T\u2019s request, but the company called it \u201canother example of its brazen disregard for contractual obligations.\u201d AT&T named both Fiberwave and Spearhead Networks as defendants.<\/p>\n
The judge narrowed the claims presented at trial in a memorandum opinion last month.<\/p>\n
The jurors heard testimony from\u00a0Chaudhry earlier in the week that he made payments to AT&T employees, but that was the culture. He said once Percy joined Spearhead Consulting, he provided leverage against AT&T employees\u2019 demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t doing something that was out of the norm. It was a pay-to-play culture, is what AT&T had,\u201d Chaudhry said.<\/p>\n
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Fiberwave\u2019s counsel, James Shields of Shields Legal Group, told the jury in closing arguments that the case was about the money. \u201cAT&T is playing the victim,\u201d Shields said.<\/p>\n
He argued that AT&T failed to prove any breach of the agreement and that AT&T had its service providers engage in pay-to-play for leads on sales.
Shields asked the jury to award a total of $50 million in damages for what Fiberwave claimed it was owed and attorney fees.<\/p>\n
AT&T\u2019s counsel, Pete Marketos of Dallas-based Reese Marketos, started his opening argument with \u201cABCs\u201d \u2014 agreements, bribes and a cover-up \u2014 and ended his closing with \u201cDEs\u201d \u2014 denial and excuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople tend to think of AT&T as a phone bill and not the people who work there,\u201d Marketos said, motioning to his client, AT&T corporate representative Shelley Goodman.<\/p>\n
Marketos told the jury that AT&T terminated its contract with Fiberwave for cause due to the DOJ investigation. As a result, Fiberwave and Spearhead Networks are obligated to indemnify AT&T for resulting legal fees. AT&T had hired Sidley Austin to do an internal investigation, which cost $8.4 million.<\/p>\n
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Spearhead Networks called\u00a0Dykema\u2019s Chris Kratovil to the stand to testify that Sidley Austin overcharged for its two-year internal investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not ask to be here, right? It wasn\u2019t anything AT&T supposedly did that triggered all of this. It was Mr. Chaudhry and his company. He was paying people commercial bribes. Where\u2019s the accountability that we talked about?\u201d Marketos said.<\/p>\n
On rebuttal, Shields told the jury that the conduct the\u00a0DOJ investigated happened after the agreement was signed. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t one word that anything that happened in that investigation during the term of the agreement,\u201d Shields said.<\/p>\n
Marketos, in his rebuttal, pointed the jurors to evidence, including the agreement and bank statements.<\/p>\n
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Shields declined to comment on the verdict.<\/p>\n
The Texas\u00a0Lawbook is an online news publication focused on business law in Texas. For more legal news, visit texaslawbook.net.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dallas jury has awarded $8 million to AT&T in a breach of contract case with former sales…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1019603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,325183,290169,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1019602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-america","tag-dallas","tag-texas","tag-tp-courts","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117146551030073032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}