Join us for a Lunch and Learn webinar next month as Laura Prather and Tom Williams deliver their presentation "Hot Topics Under the TCPA". This session will offer .75 hour MCLE credit.
Course Description: The Fall, 2018, issue of The Advocate was devoted entirely to the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). Entitled “Symposium: Anti-Slapp,” the issue was excellent, with several well written and thought provoking articles about TCPA questions that were unsettled or had been settled in ways perhaps not intended or foreseen when the statute was enacted in 2011. In 2019, the Legislature passed significant amendments to the TCPA, which clarified several issues that had been confronting courts and practitioners, particularly as it pertains to determining the applicability of the TCPA to specific types of cases and to certain procedural issues. But despite the 2019 amendments, and numerous appellate opinions interpreting the TCPA, there remain open and unsettled issues. This presentation will examine some of those issues.
About the presenters: Laura Prather is a head of the Media Law Practice Group at Haynes Boone. She has spent more than 30 years defending the human rights of freedom of expression and access to information. In court, she represents journalists, media, and entertainment companies in defamation, privacy, anti-SLAPP and intellectual property matters. At the legislature, she advocates for free speech and government transparency. Prather has been instrumental in the passage of a reporter’s privilege, anti-SLAPP statute, retraction law, and neutral reportage privilege in Texas. Her anti-SLAPP work extends well beyond Texas: serving as an Advisor to the Uniform Law Commission in the development of their model Anti-SLAPP law (the Uniform Protection of Public Expression Act) and through her work with the Public Participation Project in their efforts to obtain passage of a federal anti-SLAPP law. She is currently working in Paris as a Fulbright Scholar researching the EU, UK and US efforts to advance freedom of expression and information rights through the passage anti-SLAPP laws.
Thomas J. Williams is a partner in the Fort Worth office of Haynes and Boone, LLP, where his practice encompasses a wide range of civil litigation, including business and commercial litigation, media and First Amendment issues. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the field of First Amendment Litigation each year since 1991, and is also listed in the fields of Commercial Litigation and Intellectual Property Litigation. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates and from 2007 to 2013 served on the Texas Board of Disciplinary Appeals. In his local bar, he is currently Counselor (vice-president) of the Eldon B. Mahon Inn of Court, has served on his local Grievance Committee, is a past recipient of the Tarrant County Bar Association Professionalism Award and is a former Chair of the Board of the Tarrant County Bar Foundation.
We hope you will make plans to attend! In the meantime, don’t forget to mark your calendar for these future presentations: |