About Marc Ramirez
Marc Ramirez is a veteran journalist currently based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of California-Berkeley, he has worked for The Seattle Times, Phoenix New Times, The Dallas Morning News, USA TODAY and The Wall Street Journal. In his spare time, he is an avid food and drink enthusiast. Marc is also a dedicated fan of the Seattle Seahawks.
Articles written by Marc Ramirez
‘You Will Not Outwork Her’
Nina Cortell helped pioneer appellate law in TexasNina Cortell entered the Supreme Court of Texas on a March morning in 2003, ready to continue the fight in a case that would increase funding for Texas public schools. At the time, school districts were allowed to levy local property taxes, up to a cap, to fund their maintenance and operations costs. Nearly half of the districts—representing about 60% of the public school students—were taxing at the $1.50 statutory cap. Roughly two-thirds—or 80% of the student population—were taxing at, …
Waging War Against Wage Theft
What to do if your paycheck doesn’t look rightThough the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a federal minimum wage, regulations on child labor, and overtime pay, was enacted in 1938, Aaron Johnson is struck by how often employers continue to violate basic labor laws nearly 100 years later. “You’d think over the years that employers would learn, ‘OK, here are the rules’ and just do it,” says Johnson, an employment attorney at Fair Labor Law in Austin. “But it’s a problem that persists. There are always employers who …
Keep Calm and Check Your Policy
What to do—and not to do—when your insurance claim is deniedWhat should you do if you feel your insurance claim has been wrongly denied? First, check your policy, says Jon Michael Smith, a solo insurance coverage attorney in Austin. That may not be easy—particularly if you’ve been with an insurance carrier for a while. “You’d be surprised at the number of times people say they don’t have it,” Smith says. But the policy is where the action is. Smith recalls a man whose carrier denied his claim on a stolen truck. The problem? The man left his …
Building Trust
Construction litigator Cathy Altman has left her stamp on DallasCathy Altman shows a visitor at her home office a chunk of irregularly shaped metal, barely bigger than a fist but heavy as a bowling ball—a fragment of a power plant turbine blade from a federally owned facility in Valladolid, Mexico. It’s a souvenir of sorts, a reminder of how one of those blades broke in mid-spin, pieces flying off and shattering other blades, prompting a system failure and a lawsuit that would pull her into construction litigation for good. Altman, 55, a disarming, …
Exhausting All Your Remedies
When does it make sense for a tenant to sue a landlord?So your landlord won’t return your security deposit, or fix the plumbing, or do something about all the rodents in your attic. Should you take them to court? A lawsuit shouldn’t be the first course of action for Massachusetts tenants angry at or frustrated with their landlords, says Boston attorney Jordana Greenman. But too often, that’s what she sees. “I get three to five calls or emails per day from tenants, and in nine out of 10 instances the person has not even talked to their …
Can a Landlord Be Sued?
Yes, and the situation doesn’t have to get apocalyptic eitherFor one tenant, it was the hundreds of scorpions living beneath their rented house. For another, it was the invasion of raccoons in the attic. Rampant mice, roach infestations, bedbugs, mold: Austin-based landlord/tenant attorney Jennifer MacGeorge has seen it all—situations in which homes became uninhabitable for renters and landlords failed to adequately address the issue. “For a long time, landlords have been resting on this idea that tenants will not file a lawsuit,” she says. “My …
Can I Sue My Landlord for Not Fixing Bad Property Conditions?
For one tenant, it was the hundreds of scorpions living beneath their rented house. For another, it was the invasion of raccoons in the attic. Rampant mice, roach infestations, bedbugs, mold: Austin-based landlord/tenant attorney Jennifer MacGeorge has seen it all — situations in which homes became uninhabitable for renters and landlords failed to adequately address the issue. “For a long time, landlords have been resting on this idea that tenants will not file a lawsuit,” she says. “My …
The Man From Lubbock
John Kim leans into his West Texas rootsJohn Kim rested his elbow on the jury box as he turned to a witness in a high-level business dispute. “I want you to explain this to me,” he began, “because I’m just a simple man from”— He stopped and motioned to the jurors. “Lubbock,” they answered as one. During the trial, which took place in Harris County about 10 years ago, Kim had repeated that line a half-dozen times. First would come highbrow testimony from a brainy accountant or an executive. Then Kim, an unimposing man …
Tireless
Former Navy nuclear propulsion engineer Alfonso Chan is a ‘workhorse’—and ‘crazy smart’As an intellectual property litigator at McKool Smith, Alfonso Chan has to take complex topics such as semiconductors, electronics, biomaterials and medical devices and make them understandable for laypeople. Those can be sink-or-swim moments before juries. It’s a skill he honed in the Navy—where it was literally sink or swim. As assistant to the director of the naval reactors program, he taught sailors to service their submarines and trained commanding officers to oversee emergency …
A Desire to Serve
Brian Newby has worked in the governor’s office, spent three decades at his law firm, and retired from the Air Force with two starsBrian Newby has spent 31 years at Cantey Hanger, served 35 years with the Air Force, and logged 20 with the Texas Air National Guard. Most of this was concurrent, of course—he’s not that old—but it’s meant long days. “I haven’t had much time for anything, outside of maybe [watching] college football,” he says. “Up until three years ago, I was putting in 150-plus days on active duty on top of my 9-to-5 job.” Newby, who became Cantey Hanger’s first Black managing partner in …
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