Jury trials don’t get much more dramatic than this. A small company called Axcess International Inc. seemingly won $40.5 million in a malpractice case against Baker Botts on Thursday, only to learn moments later that it wouldn’t get a cent because it waited too long to sue.
The unusual sequence of events unfolded in state court in Dallas, where Axcess has spent three weeks pressing claims that Baker Botts improperly shared its patent applications with a competitor and failed to disclose a conflict of interest. According to a TexasLawBook reporter who was in the courtroom, jurors returned a mixed verdict, finding that Baker Botts acted negligently but that Axcess’ negligence claim fell outside the statute of limitations.
