The Dallas Court of Appeals has reversed a Dallas County court at law’s order denying a defendant’s special appearance in a breach of contract and fraud case and dismissed the defendant from the case.
Greg Lindberg v. Scott Roskind, Individually, as Representative for the Stakeholders of NoXX Technologies, Inc, and Derivatively on Behalf of NoXX Technologies, Inc. (No. 05-25-00014-CV; August 11. 2-25) arose from a commercial dispute over the acquisition of NoXX and its intellectual property. Plaintiff Scott Roskind alleged fraud, breach of contract, and theft of trade secrets in an individual, representative, and derivative capacity against defendants Becket Collectibles LLC, its associated holding company, NoXX Holdings, Inc., Kevin Isaacson, and Greg Lindberg. Lindberg, a Florida resident, filed a special appearance, which the trial court denied. Lindberg sought interlocutory relief.
In an opinion by Justice Smith, the court reversed and dismissed Roskind’s claims against Lindberg for lack of personal jurisdiction. Appearing pro se, Lindberg argued that the trial court erred by subjecting him to general or specific jurisdiction in Texas, and he is not subject to the court’s personal jurisdiction under a theory of alter ego or otherwise. Roskind countered that the court has specific jurisdiction over Lindberg because “he purposefully availed himself of the Texas market to consummate an illegal scheme,” i.e., the “sham nature of the Beckett Trust and Lindberg’s controlling authority to instruct other entities to ‘carry out the NoXX Technologies Transaction.’” The court, however, found no evidence in the record of any contacts Lindberg had with Texas (during the operative time period of the litigation, Lindberg was sitting in a Florida prison).* Based on this finding, the court had no need to move beyond the purposeful availment prong of the test. Case dismissed.
This case involved a rather unremarkable application of a jurisdictional analysis. We flagged it, however, for how the trial court handled the hearing on Lindberg’s special appearance. As Justice Smith pointed out, “[n]o evidence was submitted at the hearing, only argument by the parties’ counsel. The trial judge ruled from the bench at the conclusion of the hearing, stating she was overruling Lindberg’s special appearance and granting his motion to quash service. In announcing her ruling, the trial judge stated, ‘I overruled your special appearance. He’s going to be in this courtroom. And I just—there’s too many—too many variables in this case that the court is not going to release him from jurisdiction to this court.’” This statement does not give us much confidence that the trial court either knew or cared about the law. Saying that “the court is not going to release him from jurisdiction” implies that the judge, not the law, determines the court’s jurisdiction. That shouldn’t be acceptable in any Texas court, no matter what the lawsuit involves.
* Here’s what a November 2024 DOJ press release had to say about Lindberg: “According to court documents, from no later than 2016 through at least 2019, Greg Lindberg, 54, of Tampa, conspired with others to defraud various insurance companies, other third parties, and ultimately thousands of insurance policyholders. Lindberg and others conspired to deceive the North Carolina Department of Insurance and other regulators, evaded regulatory requirements meant to protect policyholders, concealed the true financial condition of his companies, and improperly used insurance company funds for his personal benefit. Lindberg and his co-conspirators caused companies he controlled to invest more than $2 billion in loans and other securities with his own affiliated companies and laundered the proceeds of the scheme. As set forth in the indictment, Lindberg directed the scheme and personally benefitted from the fraud in part by “forgiving” more than $125 million in loans to himself from the insurance companies that he controlled.”
TCJL Intern Satchel Williams researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
