Havins & Associates, PC

Our client was retained as a subcontractor to fabricate tens of thousands of frames for vehicles that were to be assembled in another state.  In order to meet projections provided by the manufacturer and the general contractor, our client committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase its workforce, lease additional shop space, and to purchase robotic welders.  The purchase orders issued were substantially less than what the projections called for, which invalidated the pricing of the frames.  After our client demanded an increase in the pricing, the manufacturing project was canceled and our client’s former business associates blamed our client for the project’s failure.  Our client’s position was that the project had been mismanaged, which resulted in the projections being overstated.

Out of concern that our client’s former business associates would file an out-of-state lawsuit, which would drive up our client’s costs, we elected to file a lawsuit in Houston seeking the damages our client had incurred as a result of the project being canceled.  During the case, thousands of e-mails and documents related to the project had to be reviewed, organized, and produced.  The e-mails were of particular interest because they painted a real-time picture of what had happened, as compared to witnesses’ recollection after the fact.  Ultimately, the lawsuit was settled to our client’s satisfaction for a confidential amount.

Our client, an attorney, was accused by one of his former clients of breaching fiduciary duties by sharing confidential client documents and information with a former employee of the former client.  This accusation was made after the former employee made use of certain documents in a lawsuit that the former employee had filed against the attorney’s former client.  From the beginning, our client maintained that he had not shared any documents with anyone.  Within 6 months, we negotiated a favorable settlement that did not require our client to acknowledge any wrongdoing or pay any monies.  The key to achieving the favorable settlement was focusing attention on the former client’s inability to produce any credible evidence to support its suspicions.

Our client paid a fee to a company that was to provide certain services.  The contract stated that the fee would be refunded if certain specified goals were not met by certain dates.  When those performance goals were not met, our client gave notice as required by the contract and requested the promised refund several times.  The repeated refund requests were ignored and our client asked for our help.  We discovered that the company’s corporate charter had been forfeited for failure to pay franchise taxes several months prior to our client signing the contract and paying the fee.  Instead of suing the company, we sued the company’s president personally because under the Texas Tax Code officers and directors of corporations and limited liability companies are personally liable for debts that the company incurs while its corporate charter is forfeited.  This case was settled to our client’s satisfaction.

Our client, a salesman, was sued by his former employer who claimed that he had violated his non-compete agreement by using confidential information to unfairly compete.  The damages sought exceeded $500,000.  After a temporary injunction was granted against our client and his new employer, we employed a strategy that focused on attacking the enforceability of the non-compete provision by taking depositions of customers which showed that our client had acquired his knowledge of the industry and customers before joining the former employer and that he was not using any information that qualified as confidential information to compete for customers.  The claim against our client was eventually dismissed, with our client paying nothing in settlement.

This dispute was between business partners over how to divide up monies received from the sale of oil and gas leases.  Our client claimed he was owed $1.1M based on his ownership interest in the selling company, but his business partners felt that he had not contributed enough to the project to earn that much of a payday.  Bottom line, the business partners wanted to re-trade the deal and apparently thought they could pressure our client into taking considerably less than they had agreed to pay him.  Our strategy was to file a lawsuit against not only the business partners but also against the escrow agent who would be receiving the funds from the company that bought the leases. We sought a temporary injunction against the escrow agent to prevent the escrow agent from disbursing funds to anyone, including the business partners.  When faced with the possibility that they would not be able to get their hands on any money, our client’s business partners settled within 3 days of the lawsuit being filed for a confidential amount.