Looper Reed & McGraw, P.C.

Is liking something expressive activity protected by the First Amendment? Does being a Facebook “friend” create the appearance of impropriety requiring the judge to recuse himself from the case?…more

The short answer is no, according to the American Petroleum Institute. The API compared oil and gas to other industries in terms of profit margin and effective tax rate…more

A Louisiana lessee does not owe its lessor royalties based on hedging profits, said a federal district court in Cimarex Energy Co. v. Chastant…more

Subcontracts typically contain either a pay-when-paid clause or a pay-if-paid (i.e., contingent payment) clause. A pay-when-paid clause only deals with the timing of the obligation to pay the subcontractor…more

On May 2, 2013, Governor Perry signed the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act into law. So, let’s cut right to it…more

As Business Week reports this week, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the poster requirement created by the National Labor Relations Board…more

Jesse Jenkins of the Energy Collective ponders the question. He reports as follows: According to the US Energy Information Administration 27,000 new gas wells were completed in the U.S. in 2011, many of which were horizontal…more

The general legal advice to website operators who allowed User Generated Content (UGC) in the form of comments, videos or pictures used to be relatively easy…more

Historically, subcontractors and suppliers were compelled to sign onerous and overreaching lien waivers and releases in order to receive payment. In addition, many subcontracts contain lien waivers lurking in the boiler plate…more

This is a tale of two regulatory schemes. First, there is the federal way, and I’m not making this up. First, there is the federal way, and I’m not making this up: In my last post we learned that if the BLM, when…more

The IRS continues to aggressively pursue offshore tax evasion. Another example of which is plan to share tax information with Australia and the United Kingdom…more

What does “at-will” employment mean: You might be inclined to think that it means that employees serve at the will of the master, or at the master’s pleasure. While this historically makes sense, “at-will” employment is…more

Closely held corporations often have issues come up about succession planning and also about how to structure transactions in the most tax advantageous way possible. Corporate redemption of a shareholders stock is always…more

In an opinion with as many acronyms as the Dallas Cowboys have draft-pick detractors, a California federal court in Center For Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management, held that the BLM violated the National…more

It has been said many times “the wheels of justice grind slowly.” Indeed most cases take well over a year, and some a few years, to try. To help solve this problem the Texas Legislature created a new procedural rule to…more