The Lawsuit from Hell
How an East Texas attorney spawned the most massive products-liability case ever—one that has cost millions of dollars and involved thousands of plaintiffs and might never end.
Skip Hollandsworth is a staff writer at Texas Monthly specializing in longform narratives. He grew up in Wichita Falls, attended TCU in Fort Worth, and after graduation worked as a reporter and columnist for newspapers in Dallas. He also worked as a television producer and documentary filmmaker.
In 1989, Hollandsworth joined Texas Monthly, where he has received several journalism awards, including a National Headliner Award, the national John Hancock Award for excellence in business and financial journalism, the City and Regional Magazine Association gold award for feature writing, and the Texas Institute of Letters O. Henry Award for magazine writing. He has been a finalist four times for a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2010 he won the National Magazine Award in feature writing for “Still Life,” his story about a young man who, after suffering a crippling football injury in high school, spent the next 33 years in his bedroom, unable to move. The comic crime movie Bernie, which Hollandsworth cowrote with director Richard Linklater, was released in May 2012. It’s based on Hollandsworth’s 1998 story “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.” His book, The Midnight Assassin, a true-crime historical thriller, was published in April 2016 and became a New York Times best-seller.
How an East Texas attorney spawned the most massive products-liability case ever—one that has cost millions of dollars and involved thousands of plaintiffs and might never end.
Preston Hollow gets its Bush back.
Ty Murray is the last pure American cowboy, a throwback to the mythic West. And if you visit him on his Stephenville ranch, you’d better be ready to ride.
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Wichita Falls was about as average a town as you could imagine. Except within the gates of the state hospital.
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Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of integration, he was the football star at my mostly white high school in Wichita Falls. Not much has gone right for him since.
Andrea Yates was a quiet, attentive mother with a generous smile who made her kids costumes from grocery sacks and gave them Valentine’s promising “free hugs.” We all know what happened next, but we may never know why.
The state's public mental health system was woeful to begin with, and now legislative budget cuts have made it even worse. For thousands of mentally ill kids like Grant Williams, the only place to get treatment is a juvenile prison.
One woman’s unlikely crusade to help poor kids succeed—and what Texas can learn from her example.
On screen and off, his affect is that of someone who should not be disturbed: a crotchety, contentious, impatient, and thoroughly genuine West Texan. That’s what makes his characters—including his latest, the lead in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada— so believable.
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Thanks to her fight against illiteracy, the first lady of Texas is getting more attention than most of her predecessors— and much more than she’d like.
What really happened to Kari Baker? We may be about to find out.
The shocking testimony of Vanessa Bulls against Matt Baker.
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls—inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas’ sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
Goree prison unit inmate Hattie Ellis had a short-lived recording career, but her music made a lasting impression.
Without the cooperation of Texas law enforcement, the dogfighting subculture will continue to thrive.
How did a girl from Harlingen become Houston's hostess with the mostest? Sweetie, Becca Cason Thrash has always been the life of the party.
After spending her adolescence largely out of view (except for a few scrapes with restaurant and bar employees), presidential spawn Jenna Bush is emerging as a public person in her own right. But her return to private life can’t come soon enough.
So what if Sandra Brown’s novels have wildly implausible plot twists, banal endings, over-the- top characters, and other literary no-no’s. She’s published nearly 70 of them since 1981, and 55 have gone on to be best-sellers. We’re sure the sex scenes have nothing to do with it.
What was it, exactly, that caused Vickie Dawn Jackson, a sweet, soft-spoken nurse at Nocona General Hospital, to become one of the most prolific serial killers in Texas history?
His dreams. His fears. The truth about his love life. A candid chat with Texas’ most misunderstood sports hero.
Her husband, Fred Baron, helped bankroll John Edwards's presidential campaign, only to die of cancer amid the most sordid political scandal in recent history. But before long, Dallas's newest rainmaker had emerged from the wreckage—with every hair in place.
The strange case of Jeffrey and Yvonne Stern gets stranger. Yvonne filed a lawsuit against her husband's ex-mistress, Michelle Gaiser, who is expected to testify that Jeffrey helped plot his wife's murder.
The suicides of four Texas teens who were brutally bullied have prompted cries for new legislation. But one lawyer has a different plan: Sue the school districts.
The tragic culture clash that led to the murder of a governor’s son.
CBS’s 48 Hours fills in the final chapters of the notorious Matt Baker.
The faces—and voices—of eighteen Texans who are living the debate over illegal immigration.
Dad wanted us to remember our family camping getaways. After so many disasters, how could I forget?
63 things that all Texans must do before they die.
That’s the number of times Harris County housewife Susan Wright stabbed her husband in a brutal 2003 murder that riveted the nation and landed her in prison for 25 years. But should the butcher of the burbs be freed?
Cathy McBroom loved working as a case manager for Samuel Kent, Galveston’s brilliant, charismatic, all-powerful federal district judge. Then he started attacking her.
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Texas is full of buried booty—or, to be a bit more accurate, full of stories about buried booty that no one has been able to find. Here are six of the supposedly greatest Texas treasures still out there. May the hunters strike gold.
Location: Lakeway Resort and Spa, outside AustinWhat You’ll Need: Bathing suit, trashy magazinesDon’t get me wrong: My wife and I are happy to take the Beloved One (our daughter) around the state so she can see things. Still, there are times when our idea of vacation heaven
A violent tackle in a high school football game paralyzed John McClamrock for life. His mother made sure it was a life worth living.
Can a former member of a vicious Houston gang leave crime behind and build a new life for himself?
How a mother and daughter hired a hit man to kill their husband and father, and why they might just get away with it.
A Houston funeral home where the dead do not go modestly into that good night.
On January 13, the girls’ basketball team for the Covenant School of Dallas, an elite private Christian school in upscale North Dallas, demolished its opponents from the Dallas Academy, a lesser known East Dallas school that focuses on students who face a variety of learning problems.
When T. Boone Pickens launched his Pickens Plan last summer, crude oil was at $136 a barrel. Now, with crude at or below $40, does anyone care anymore about what Pickens has to say?
Trammell Crow made millions based on what he called hunches—warehouses, atrium marts, huge hotels—and amazingly, most of his deals he did on a handshake.
Friends and family knew Deborah Murphey as a mild-mannered nurse and a loving wife and mother. Then a U.S. marshal knocked on her door.
Why everyone in Dallas is talking about a depressed elephant.
Our most iconic oil and gas man, lately a water marauder and now a celebrated windcatter, has saved himself a couple of times in his eighty glorious years. Who’s to say he can’t save America?
Before they clubbed two deer to death in their tiny West Texas town, the four high school football stars were treated like royalty. Afterward, when news of their exploits hit the Internet, they were celebrities of a very different sort.
Houston’s most famous teenage killer is trying to reclaim her life and move on.