SOUTHEAST TEXAS RECORD

HOUSTON – A federal judge in Texas has dismissed an $8 million fraudulent billing case after three health care centers and two insurance companies agreed to a settlement.

Albert Betts, executive director for the Insurance Council of Texas, says Texans are being harmed by misinformation and half-truths about their recovery.

HOUSTON – Four individuals are seeking damages from a federal agency over alleged injuries sustained in an auto accident in Harris County.

HOUSTON – A patient alleges she needed a second procedure because of the negligence of a physician.

HOUSTON – A local truck driver alleges his age and race were factors in his termination by his former employer.

HOUSTON – A Harris County seaman alleges he was injured while working aboard a vessel because he was not provided adequate equipment for the job.

HOUSTON – A Harris County couple alleges a contractor they hired to build their house finished the project 10 months past the deadline and that the house has numerous defects.

HOUSTON – A man alleges he was injured while learning to operate a motorcycle because he was not given adequate, proper and sufficient instruction.

HOUSTON – A shopper at a Houston supermarket alleges plastic wrap caused her to fall at the store.

HOUSTON – ConocoPhillips Co. has won a contract dispute over a drilling project after a state appeals court found that a drop in oil prices isn’t a natural or man-made disaster.

MARSHALL – Fluid technicians have filed a class-action lawsuit against Clements Fluids Inc. over allegations they were not compensated for overtime work.

The concept of written legal rules—of the law itself—assumes that their content is fixed and ascertainable. The rule of law likewise depends on citizens having advance notice of what they can and cannot do, pursuant to clear, knowable directives. Legal scholars expend enormous energy pontificating about the appropriate techniques judges should apply in the course of constitutional interpretation: textualism, originalism, and so forth. Libertarian theorists argue strenuously that judges must be given greater authority—through “judicial engagement”—over the political branches. Each day, lawyers across the country trot off to court, briefs in hand, hoping to convince a black-robed judge–enthroned behind a raised, magisterial bench—that the relevant legal rules, properly construed, compel a ruling in favor of their client.

MARSHALL DIVISION May 30 2:18-cv-00236-JRGPC COMA LLC V. XEROX CORPORATION

HOUSTON – Houston Community College is facing a lawsuit from a professor who accuses the school of racial discrimination, recent Harris County District Court records indicate.