Texas’ First District Court of Appeals in Houston has affirmed a trial court’s ruling that it was up to an arbitral panel to determine whether it had jurisdiction to hear a corporate tax dispute. In Halliburton Co. v. KBR, Inc., No. 01-12-00949-CV, (Tex. App – Houston, September 11, 2014), Halliburton spun off its wholly-owned subsidiary KBR in 2007. Prior to the separation, the companies entered into a number of agreements including a Master Services Agreement (MSA) that referenced a Tax Sharing Agreement (TSA).

Retired Judge Judith S. Kaye, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and University of Missouri School of Law Professor S.I. Strong recently published International Commercial Arbitration Coming to a Courthouse Near You, 53 Judges’ Journal 20 (Summer 2014); University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-20.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has overturned a lower court’s decision not to compel arbitration in an oil & gas dispute. In Rushaid v. National Oilwell Varco, Inc., an oil drilling company (“Rushaid”) entered into a number of contracts with a group of related oil well companies.

Michael L. Rustad, Thomas F. Lambert Jr. Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School, and Thomas H. Koenig, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology in the Law and Public Policy program at Northeastern University, have published an interesting research paper entitled, Wolves of the World Wide Web: Reforming Social Networks’ Contracting Practices, Wake Forest Law Review (Forthcoming); Suffolk University Law School Research Paper No. 14-25.