It was a very good year
We’re business court champs with a 4-0 record. We’ve tried 15 cases this year and had our usual string of successes in other courts, such as eviscerating a $1 billion claim over easement rights in East Texas. We were honored this year with several coveted titles nationally and statewide. Our new Dallas office is thriving.
We don’t need to exaggerate; it was a very good year.
Business Court Champs
We focus largely on complex commercial litigation, which is also the focus of the Texas Business Courts. We won the first bench trial in these courts in 2025 and the second in April this year when the judge ruled in a “favored shipper” case that our client need only pay $1 and not the $200 million demanded by one of the largest U.S. suppliers of natural gas.
We also won a business court case for a smaller court reporting business, getting every cent it requested of a jury because a larger reporting conglomerate breached a contract. And we foiled an attempt when a losing side tried to resurrect its $200 million case against our client Brown & Root in business court after we defeated them in our 2026 jury trial.
“We’ve had remarkable success in the business courts for the occasional smaller client like the reporting service and for multi-national clients,” said AZA managing partner John Zavitsanos.
AZA was widely recognized
These victories led to AZA being named a Texas Powerhouse Law firm by Law360, the 2026 Texas Litigation Department of the Year for General Litigation by Texas Lawyer and a national Most Feared Law Firm in the Awesome Opponent category by BTI Consulting. AZA was also honored for the 13th year by Chambers USA and for the 15th year by Best Law Firms. Details on some of these awards can be found below in this newsletter.
AZA persists for its clients
AZA keeps fighting for its clients with its appellate team that includes former judge Daryl Moore and Law360 Rising Star Kelsi Stayart White. The team reversed an $18.3 million judgment in a California case over trade secrets in a cosmetic penile implant case that captured the attention of the national legal media.
Also this year, the AZA appellate team defended a group of medical providers against insurers who claimed the providers operated a scheme working with lawsuit plaintiffs. The AZA team got the $14 million case dismissed on the pleadings, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in February used AZA’s novel procedural argument when it refused to allow the insurers to replead the case.
AZA has persevered around the country in class action cases for thousands of patients whose protected health information was illegally shared with websites like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Microsoft by their healthcare providers. We also made new law this year when the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled that a government-run hospital cannot hide behind sovereign immunity to avoid a class action lawsuit over placing hidden trackers on patient portals to gather and sell protected patient information to third parties.
AZA’s intellectual property and patent work has increased with the opening of the firm’s Dallas office. Our team’s more than $78 million jury win over Samsung Electronics Co., which grew to more than $92 million by the final judgment, made national top verdict lists compiled by TopVerdict and Law360.
Jason McManis, head of AZA’s IP group, and partner Warren McCarty, managing partner of the Dallas office, were both named to Benchmark Litigation’s 2026 40 & Under list this year. Mr. McCarty was also named to the international IAM IP International List of IP Strategists.