Texas Business Court Finds Footing as First Jury Hears Witness

Day one of a jury trial in a $200 million dispute involving an oil delivery project brought reminders that the Texas Business Court is doing this for the first time.

The trial opened in a different courthouse than the one for jury selection because the Houston division of the nomadic court needed to move to a location with a jury box. The temperature in the courtroom was “aberrationally warm,” Judge Sofia Adrogué said, before she ordered the doors open for air circulation after multiple requests for staff to lower the temperature seemed to go nowhere.

Adrogué, presiding over her first jury trial as judge, temporarily lost her cool outside the presence of the jury when lawyers couldn’t resolve a dispute over the admission of exhibits.

“I haven’t been a judge for 30 years,” she told them. “I’ve been a judge for a nanosecond. I’m doing my damnedest.”

The state’s inaugural business court jury trial looks to show big corporations that jurors — with various life experiences and educational backgrounds — are equipped to decide these complicated, high-dollar disputes. Compare all of this to Delaware, where litigators in the state’s centuries-old Chancery Court get to try their case to a judge only.

Seated a day earlier from a pool of five dozen residents in the Houston area, the nine women and three men who made the cut are a key feature in the 17-month-old court that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and lawmakers stood up in September 2024 after years of pushing from the state’s business lobby. By request of any party, a jury rather than the judge will decide a case that the court and the parties couldn’t resolve ahead of trial.

“You are the arbiters of the facts here,” Roland Garcia, a Greenberg Traurig lawyer, told the jury during opening statements.

Two jurors arrived a little late, drawing a light admonishment from Adrogué. The lunch delivery also was tardy, prompting a scheduled 45-minute break to double in length. The jurors requested that next time more potato chips be provided.

But the decorated lawyers laying out a fight over the billion dollar crude oil delivery project appeared to hold their interest.

Some jurors jotted in court-issued notebooks. A younger woman appeared to nod in agreement when Sarah Patel Pacheco, a lawyer for Jackson Walker LLP, showed a contract that she said proves her client, Bonnie Berry, never agreed to give plaintiff Ted Powers a one-fifth interest in the project.

When another lawyer forgot what “C” stood for in an oil-related acronym, a male juror offered help — “Crude,” he shouted from the back row.

If the jury loses steam, they need not worry: Adrogué ensured coffee will be on hand throughout the two-week trial.

After opening statements took up most of the day, jurors heard testimony from only one witness: Powers, the plaintiff.

They must decide if Powers is part owner of the project, as he claims, or if he is instead an agent who other owners brought on to secure outside investment.

Powers, of New York, practiced law for 30 years with stops at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and two firms now operating under new names: A&O Shearman and Norton Rose Fulbright.

Two defendants —Marvin Berry and Bonnie Berry—will testify that the contract promised Powers profits in the future but only if he secured third-party funding, which he didn’t. Another defendant — Lawrence Berry, the brother of Marvin and brother-in-law of Bonnie — largely agrees with Powers’ version of events.

“There’s some disputes that just need a fair-minded jury to sort out,” said Lawrence Berry’s lawyer, Barrett Reasoner of Gibbs & Bruns LLP. “This is absolutely one of them.”

Powers is represented by Greenberg Traurig LLP and Beck Redden LLP.

Marvin Berry is represented by Henke & Williams LLP, Douglas Allison of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Roberts Markland LLP.

Bonnie Berry is also represented by Douglas Allison of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Alexander Dubose & Jefferson LLP.

The case is Powers v. Berry, No. 24–BC11A–0025, 2/10/26.