SAN ANTONIO – Mikal Watts, the trial lawyer who represented a convicted former state senator, will be honored by the Texas Trial Lawyers Association with a Legislative Advocacy Award at its next annual meeting.
For more than a year, former state Sen. Carlos Uresti proclaimed his innocence until pleading guilty to a bribery conspiracy charge last month.
The long-time Democrat was also convicted of 11 felonies in February, which included money laundering for his work with FourWinds Logistics.
Watts, a San Antonio lawyer, made multiple headlines in his representation of Uresti throughout the proceedings, including the following: “Federal Prosecutor: Uresti Borrowed money from Watts against lawsuit settlement.”
On Dec. 6, Michael Gallagher, founder of The Gallagher Law Firm in Houston, will present Watts with the Legislative Advocacy Award at TTLA’s 2018 Annual Meeting & CLE Seminar.
Gallagher and Watts are working together to represent numerous Texas counties in opioid litigation against drug manufactures.
Throughout his career, Watts has been no stranger to headline news.
In August 2016, a federal jury acquitted Watts on all counts in a criminal case that accused him of falsifying claims against BP following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Watts was indicted on allegations that he committed fraud when purportedly signed up more than 40,000 coastal clients after the spill – a showy number that helped put him at the head of the plaintiffs’ steering committee.
The indictment asserted Watts and his co-defendants allegedly fabricated thousands of clients, including the representation of a dog by the name of Lucy Lu.
More recently, Watts made headlines again when he was hit with a class action in April, which was brought by corn farmers he represented in the Syngenta AG litigation.
Watts and his joint venture partners secretly sought to exclude 60,000 farmers from class actions filed in federal court in a “fraudulent scheme to extract unreasonable fees,” according to a lawsuit filed by Kellogg Farms.
A past winner of the Legislative Advocacy Award includes Beaumont’s own Bryan Blevins of Provost Umphrey.