AZA went to trial 20 times in 2023, which amplifies the firm’s power both inside the courthouse and on the courthouse steps. And there are two more trials scheduled in December.

Included in the 20 were a more than $150 million win against a large insurance company, a $41 million win an in oil and gas trespass case, a $32.5 million award in a Midtown construction case and a $2.4 million win for a client who did not pay a penny to the party that sued it for $30 million.

Other Texas firms do not get anything like this experience, and it benefits all of AZA’s clients. Why hire “litigators” who have not tried a case to verdict in years, as opposed to a real trial firm that is in trial every month? Would you trust your surgery to a doctor who only occasionally gets into the operating room?

We know juries, and we know some interesting things about post-COVID juries. All our lawyers go to trial. We get the newly licensed lawyers into court as quickly as possible. And that, given our trial docket, is very soon.

Don’t want to go to trial? How better to avoid it and properly value a settlement than to have true road-tested trial lawyers advise you?

“We are trial lawyers, and we thrive in the courthouse. This year we beat back claims against our clients and won lawsuits we filed for them. This record of accomplishment creates power for our clients before a jury and a judge. It also gives us the muscle and knowledge to win at a pre-trial game of settlement chicken,” said AZA co-founder John Zavitsanos.

“We are always ready to start that trial. Always,” Zavitsanos said.

In May alone, AZA defeated a $5 million breach of contract claim for an energy company, defeated a novel wrongful termination suit for the Port of Houston and had a jury find in favor of a doctors group sued by a former member.

Here are a few of the other cases we tried in 2023:

• In arbitration, we won over $150 million for a medical group suing a large insurer for its egregious breach of contract. Our client got 100% of the damages requested from the unanimous panel along with prejudgment interest and penalties and attorneys’ fees. The insurer lowered the payment rates without following the required contractual process. This is the latest in a series of wins against insurers on behalf of medical doctors across the country.
• We teamed up with another firm to win two clients $41.8 million from a South Texas jury in an oil and gas trespass case. The jury found that Energy Transfer trespassed by interfering with the exploration and production rights of the two smaller energy companies when Energy Transfer injected natural gas processing waste byproducts in the subsurface.
• In a complex six-week case involving the construction of Houston Midtown apartments, a Harris County jury awarded Mid Main Properties LLP $32.5 million. The case centered on work done at a four-building, multi-use Midtown property on Main Street where a contentious and malicious general contractor did defective work, overcharged and eventually abandoned the project.
• A Fort Bend County jury returned a $9 million verdict against Toby Eoff and others involved in conspiracy against DistributionNOW to steal the energy sector giant’s trade secrets after it purchased the business Odessa Pumps. The jury saw 32 boxes of evidence in the massive case.
• In October, AZA defended Odessa Pumps in a separate case, and a Harris County jury awarded it $2.4 million in attorneys’ fees in a breach of contract case against GR Energy and its affiliates over a 2021 asset purchase. GR Energy sought approximately $30 million but took nothing.

That’s just a few of our 2023 trials.

We have also had some great confidential settlements for clients. And we’ve won in courtrooms before it got to jury selection, too.

For example, we won a motion summary judgment for a restaurant client, ending a contract feud. We won dismissal of a California wrongful death lawsuit against an energy company client. We even got a judge to issue a remarkable sanction of $525,000 against two lawyers when tossing a lawsuit they filed against our client. The judge also ordered those lawyers to each take 10 hours of ethics CLE each year for the next five years.

You are better off starting with the best, most experienced trial lawyers around.