Mike Boone, partner in and founder of Dallas’ Haynes and Boone, experienced a first on April 25: He shared a room with the current and four former presidents at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the Southern Methodist University campus. "We couldn’t have had better day for this," says Boone, who is chairman-elect of SMU’s board of governors and served as a member of the negotiating team that helped bring the Bush institution to the school. While all statements by current and former presidents were "classy," Boone singled out former President Bill Clinton’s as funny. Clinton has worked closely on philanthropic causes with both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush since all the men have left the Oval Office closely enough for some good-natured ribbing. Clinton told the crowd he was "the black sheep of the Bush family." Boone says Clinton waited a beat and then turned to former First Lady Barbara Bush and asked "Isn’t that right, mama?" The new Bush library, which joins the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin and the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, will be a big draw for Dallas and the state, Boone says. "It’s a jewel," he adds.
Be Prepared
When a lawyer hits the legal lottery and his case is granted an audience before the nine most important justices in the United States, there is no such thing as over-preparation. That’s how Brian Lauten viewed his April 24 argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Naiel Nassar, a case in which he’s trying to preserve a huge jury verdict he won in a Title VII employment discrimination case on behalf of a plaintiff in 2010. A jury found that the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) constructively discharged Nassar from his faculty position because of racially motivated harassment by a superior and that UTSW had retaliated against him. UTSW appealed the verdict to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 5th Circuit partially reversed on March 8, 2012, upholding the retaliation verdict but reversing on the constructive-discharge issue, after finding there was not sufficient evidence to prove that claim. UTSW, which denied the allegations at trial, appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The issue the high court has to decide in Nassar is whether a trial court errs when instructing a jury based on a theory of mixed motives in a Title VII retaliation claim. To prepare, Lauten says he held three moot court arguments in Washington D.C. two before the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen and one at Georgetown University Law Center. "I have lived up here for the last month, and I have never felt more prepared," Lauten, a partner in Dallas’ Sawicki & Lauten, says hours after the argument. "And here’s the bottom line: I am confident that we’re going to win this case, but it’s going to be close. But, if we don’t win, it’s not that we didn’t write the best brief possible" and prepare and prepare and prepare, he says. Daryl Joseffer, a partner in the Washington D.C. office of King & Spalding who represents UTSW, did not return a call for comment. There’s more on the line for Lauten in Nassar than preserving his client’s jury verdict, he says there are also substantial attorney fees that Lauten and his co-counsel won in the case that are also in the high court’s hands [See "Fees for All: Judge Approves Nearly $500,000 for Counsel Who Won Title VII Suit" Texas Lawyer, Aug. 16, 2010, page 1.] "If we lose, we’re going to have to go back and retry the case," Lauten says. "But the good news: If we win, we’ll get our attorneys fees for all of this for defending it in the 5th Circuit and the Supreme Court. That’s our view."
