In the cases that turn on legal rulings — not jury verdicts — winning requires a specific perspective that most lawyers do not bring by default. Roach Newton was built to provide it: understanding how judges at every level of the court system actually decide the legal questions that determine outcomes, and building the record that makes those decisions go the right way.
Most major cases are decided on legal rulings, not jury verdicts. The perspective that produces the best results asks not which argument wins today, but which ruling the reviewing court would most naturally adopt as the logical next step in its own jurisprudence — and what the trial judge needs from the brief to reach it on her own.
Roach Newton does not replace the trial team. It adds a specific perspective the trial team is not simultaneously positioned to maintain: the appellate court's view of the legal record being built today. The specialist who holds that perspective — embedded in the trial team from the beginning — makes the existing team better and produces results the team working alone almost never achieves.
The fastest path to settlement in a high-stakes coverage, tort, or contract dispute is credible risk of an adverse published ruling — not adverse facts. Facts affect this case. A published ruling affects every future case presenting the same issue. Creating that jurisprudential risk deliberately, credibly, and early is the most powerful settlement tool available. It is also the tool that requires the perspective this firm provides.
Before appellate practices were common in Texas firms, a young lawyer who had worked in the United States Supreme Court building before law school — and won both of UT's senior moot court championships — knew he wanted to do appeals, not just trials. The more he did both, the more clearly he saw: judges make every important final decision, even regarding the jury's own fact findings.
In 1993, Randy Roach took that insight — judge-centered, jurisprudence-driven advocacy — and founded what would become Roach Newton: Texas's first policyholder-only insurance coverage boutique. Over thirty years, the firm has made controlling law at the Texas Supreme Court, the Fifth Circuit, and intermediate appellate courts in insurance coverage, fraud, gross negligence, and punitive damages.
What makes Roach Newton different is not just experience — it is a method, and a foundation for that method that exists nowhere else. Thirty-plus years of teaching judicial advocacy alongside sitting appellate judges at UT Law and UH Law Center — working through more than thirty different contract interpretation and coverage problems, each briefed and argued through all three levels of the Texas court system — produced something that practice alone cannot produce: a detailed, iterative, empirically grounded understanding of how judges at each level actually think about the legal questions that come before them.
Today Roach Newton focuses its practice on the three areas where its judge-centered methodology delivers the most measurable value: policyholder insurance coverage disputes, Texas Supreme Court and appellate practice, and intentional torts — fraud, gross negligence, bad faith, and punitive damages. In all three, the firm serves as a force multiplier: the specialist added to your team when the legal ruling is the hinge on which the case turns.
The following tally reflects representative Texas Supreme Court insurance coverage decisions from 2015 through 2025. This distribution is not the result of a neutral jurisprudential process. It is the visible output of four decades of systematic curation by the insurer-side coverage bar — litigating cases likely to produce favorable published precedent and settling cases likely to produce unfavorable ones.
The policyholder who walks into a major coverage dispute without understanding this dynamic is bringing a knife to a gunfight the other side has been preparing for forty years. The right response is not indignation. It is a strategy specifically designed to win within it — which requires identifying the legal argument most coherent with the controlling jurisprudence, developing it before the summary judgment record closes, and presenting it in a way that gives the reviewing court a reason to adopt it as the natural next step in the law.
The perspective that produces the best results in cases that turn on legal rulings is not primarily about knowing the law. It is about understanding how judges at each level of the court system actually think about the legal questions they are asked to decide — and what they need from the advocate to reach the right conclusion on their own.
"The judge persuades herself. The advocate's job is to give her everything she needs to do it right."
Every engagement — regardless of the practice area — is driven by the same question: what legal ruling will the reviewing court most naturally want to adopt, and what does the judge need from the brief and the record to reach it on her own?
The insurance playing field is not level. Nine of the last thirteen Texas Supreme Court coverage decisions favored insurers. That distribution is not random — it reflects four decades of systematic jurisprudential curation by the insurer-side coverage bar. The right response is a strategy specifically designed to win within that landscape.
The key insight: The coverage appeal is won or lost before the appeal exists. The game-changing legal argument must be identified, developed, and presented to the trial court in the summary judgment briefing — before the court rules. The bad faith claim, properly developed, forestalls premature summary judgment while the record is being built on both tracks simultaneously.
The Texas Supreme Court takes approximately one in eleven petitions for review — not to correct error, but to advance and clarify Texas jurisprudence. Getting there requires identifying the legal ruling the Court would want to adopt before the Court knows it wants to adopt it, and building the trial record that makes that ruling available on de novo review.
The key insight: The time to involve the right appellate specialist is before trial — not after. The argument that motivates settlement must be made at the trial court level if not before. The evidence needed to win on appeal must be developed through discovery. By the time a case is lost, it is frequently too late to build the record that a reversal requires.
Punitive damages cases have two simultaneous dimensions: the fact dimension, which the trial team manages, and the legal dimension — gross negligence sufficiency, the BMW/Campbell constitutional framework, legal causation — which is reviewed on appeal under standards far more favorable to reversal. Most trial teams manage only the first dimension.
The key insight: The conscious indifference record, the reprehensibility evidence, and the bifurcation strategy must all be designed before the discovery plan is finalized. Once the discovery window closes, the most powerful tools in a punitive damages case are no longer available. Forty-four years of practice on both sides of the docket — fifteen years representing corporate defendants, thirty years on the plaintiff and policyholder side — produces an understanding of what the other side genuinely fears.
Winning at the Texas Supreme Court is not a last-minute endeavor. It is an architecture — one that must be designed and built from the earliest stages of litigation, long before the case arrives at the Court. For more than three decades, Randy Roach has been the lawyer clients call when that destination is already in view.
"To win at the Texas Supreme Court, you have to set up the legal issue — one that will carry sufficient jurisprudential importance in the Court's eyes — at trial if possible, at the court of appeals if not, and as a last resort for the first time at the Court itself. That setup is the work. The oral argument is its culmination."
The Texas Supreme Court grants review in a small fraction of the cases it receives — and it does so on the basis of jurisprudential importance. A compelling legal question must not only exist in a case; it must be identified, framed, and preserved at every prior stage of the litigation, so that by the time the petition for review is filed, the issue arrives at the Court fully formed and undeniable. This philosophy is not merely an advocacy preference. It is the foundation of Randy's teaching, his CLE presentations, and the reason sophisticated clients bring him into cases that are still far from the Texas Supreme Court — because they understand that the argument is won or lost long before it is delivered.
In many cases, clients retain Randy immediately after a verdict or during post-verdict motion practice — well before any appellate court has seen the case. They know the case is headed to the Texas Supreme Court, and they want the legal issue architected for that destination from the start. This means shaping jury charges, crafting post-verdict motions, framing the court of appeals briefing, and ensuring that by the time the petition for review is written, nothing of key jurisprudential value has been left unpreserved.
In other cases, the client's existing counsel has handled the litigation through the court of appeals and comes to Randy specifically for the Texas Supreme Court oral argument. Oral argument before a court of nine justices who have read every brief and prepared pointed questions demands a particular kind of advocate: one who has appeared before that Court repeatedly, who understands its jurisprudential preoccupations, and who can hold a rigorous jurisprudential colloquy and answer the toughest questions under pressure.
A third category reflects something rarer. Randy is retained because his deep expertise in insurance coverage jurisprudence travels. Coverage law has developed some of the most refined and robust doctrines in Texas civil jurisprudence — doctrines that courts in other areas frequently look to for guidance. When a case in an entirely different field presents a legal issue with a strong structural analogue to coverage doctrine, Randy's command of that jurisprudence becomes directly relevant.
Renowned Houston trial lawyer Rusty Hardin retained Randy for his first involvement in this case — at the Texas Supreme Court oral argument stage. The central issue was whether an attorney engagement agreement would be construed against the lawyer who drafted it. The principle at stake was contra proferentem — a doctrine with deep and powerful roots in insurance coverage law. Mr. Hardin's firm recognized that Randy's mastery of that doctrine in the coverage context made him the right advocate to argue its application in this novel attorney-client setting.
Retained for the first time at the Texas Supreme Court to argue this insurance coverage dispute, Randy brought to bear both his oral advocacy credentials before the Court and his deep knowledge of Texas insurance coverage jurisprudence — the substantive command that makes his argument preparation qualitatively different from that of a generalist appellate advocate.
Randy has taught oral argument — its theory, its craft, and its strategy — for more than thirty-three years. That body of teaching is unusual not because of its duration alone, but because it is simultaneously academic and operational: the same principles Randy teaches in the classroom and at CLE seminars are the principles he applies in preparation for his own Texas Supreme Court arguments.
CLE Programs and Judge Panels. Randy has designed and presented CLE programs on oral argument at the state, local, and national levels, including for the State Bar of Texas and the University of Texas School of Law appellate seminars. A distinctive feature of his CLE work is his practice of moderating panels of sitting judges — asking them directly about what works, what fails, and what advocates misunderstand about oral argument from the bench's perspective.
Judicial Surveys. Randy has conducted formal surveys of judges on oral argument — gathering empirical data on judicial preferences, common advocate errors, and the factors that actually move the needle in an appellate argument. This research informs his own preparation and his teaching, and it represents a level of methodological rigor that distinguishes his approach from the conventional wisdom that passes for oral argument advice in most CLE settings.
Live Argument Critiques. Among the most distinctive elements of Randy's CLE participation has been his role critiquing live oral arguments — actual arguments in real cases — conducted during State Bar of Texas and University of Texas appellate seminars. These are not moot court exercises; they are genuine arguments in pending cases, observed and critiqued in real time before an audience of practitioners.
Practitioner, Teacher, and Authority
What distinguishes Randy Roach's oral argument practice is not any single credential but the integration of all of them. He has argued before the Texas Supreme Court. He has taught the craft for more than three decades. He has sat across the table from judges and asked them what they wish advocates understood. He has stood in front of audiences of experienced lawyers and critiqued real arguments in real time.
Each of these activities informs the others. The advocate who teaches learns to articulate what he does instinctively. The teacher who moderates judges hears the other side of every argument he has ever made. The practitioner who has surveyed the bench carries into every preparation session a data-informed sense of what courts actually value — as opposed to what advocates assume they value. The result is an approach to oral argument that is disciplined, audience-centered, and grounded in a clear understanding of the Texas Supreme Court's jurisprudential mission.
Trucking cases present the full range of legal complexity that defines Roach Newton's practice in a single case type — catastrophic injury with gross negligence and punitive damages exposure, coverage disputes over reservation of rights and excess tower obligations, and appellate issues on causation, successor liability, and the conscious indifference standard that recur across the industry. The firm has been engaged in major trucking litigation as appellate counsel embedded in trial teams before verdict, as national and regional gross negligence and punitives counsel, and as coverage counsel in disputes between carriers, their insurers, and injured parties.
The most important legal work in a major trucking case happens before the verdict — not after it. Roach Newton has served as national and regional gross negligence and punitives counsel in trucking cases across Texas and multiple other states, embedded in trial teams to manage the legal dimension of catastrophic injury litigation while trial counsel manages the factual one.
Track record includes: National gross negligence and punitives counsel for one of the largest trucking companies in the country. Statewide gross negligence and punitives trial counsel for a major insurer of trucking companies. Multiple JB Hunt matters in Texas and other states, including a Midland case where a successor liability argument via Rule 166 produced a pre-verdict settlement. Zero-punitive-damages results in bifurcated trials.
Coverage disputes in major trucking cases are among the most complex in commercial insurance — involving multiple layers, reservation of rights on gross negligence and punitives, excess tower obligations, and bad faith exposure when the carrier's insurer fails to properly evaluate or tender. Roach Newton has served as both carrier-side and policyholder-side coverage counsel in trucking matters.
Track record includes: Excess tower coverage settlement in a major trucking catastrophic injury case, following development of bad faith failure to evaluate and tender arguments. Coverage work for Transport Insurance, a major insurer of trucking companies. Concurrent mediation strategy producing simultaneous resolution of underlying liability and coverage disputes. Multiple excess of insurance matters where demand exceeded available coverage and bad faith exposure changed the settlement calculus.
Trucking cases produce recurring appellate issues — causation, foreseeability, gross negligence standards, successor liability, and the constitutional limits on punitive damages — that the Texas Supreme Court addresses in ways that affect the entire industry. Roach Newton has been involved in trucking-related appeals at the Texas Supreme Court, intermediate courts, and the Fifth Circuit, including amicus work on causation standards affecting the trucking industry broadly.
Track record includes: Amicus brief in a Texas Supreme Court trucking case addressing fact-dependent foreseeability and causation standards — a ruling with industry-wide implications. Gross negligence and punitives appellate work in multiple trucking matters at the intermediate appellate court level and the Texas Supreme Court. WM gross negligence and punitives defense across California and Texas trucking matters.
The intersection of gross negligence, punitive damages, and coverage is where trucking cases become categorically different from ordinary personal injury litigation — and where the right specialist adds the most value. The carrier whose insurer is reserving rights on a gross negligence allegation, the excess tower that is undervaluing a likely judgment to avoid tendering, and the trial team that has not yet designed discovery around the conscious indifference record are all in situations where the legal dimension of the case is not being managed with the same rigor as the factual one.
That gap — between excellent factual preparation and the legal work that determines whether the verdict survives appeal, whether the coverage responds, and whether the case settles at a value that reflects the full legal exposure — is precisely where Roach Newton has been engaged in major trucking matters for over four decades.
The following matters illustrate outcomes produced by identifying and developing the right legal argument at the right stage — in most cases before any appellate court had ruled, and in some cases before any motion had been filed. Client identities are not disclosed. The legal theory, the procedural result, and the outcome speak for themselves.
Not every case warrants a specialist. Most are well-served by a strong trial team or coverage counsel and nothing more. But a handful of warning signs reliably distinguish the matters where adding the right specialist early can change outcomes the existing team had not reached — and the earlier those signs are recognized, the more options remain.
Two or more of these signals in the same matter is the moment to make the call — and the earlier it is made, the more the specialist can do.
The right measure of cost is not the specialist's hourly rate. It is the cost of the dispute with the specialist's involvement compared to the cost without it. A dispute that resolves in eighteen months because the specialist identified and developed the decisive argument may be vastly less expensive than a dispute litigated for five years and settled for a fraction of fair value.
For more than thirty years, Randy Roach co-taught judicial advocacy at the University of Texas School of Law and the University of Houston Law Center alongside sitting judges and staff attorneys drawn from the Texas Supreme Court, the Texas Courts of Appeals, and the federal bench. The teaching vehicle has included more than thirty different contract interpretation and coverage problems, each briefed and argued through all three levels of the Texas court system in succession: trial court, intermediate court of appeals, Texas Supreme Court. Working through those problems in real time, semester after semester, alongside dozens of different judges and staff attorneys — hearing them explain what makes a proposed ruling feel jurisprudentially sound or uncomfortable, watching them evaluate arguments across more than thirty different legal problems — produced an understanding of judicial decision-making in the cases that turn on legal rulings that no amount of pure practice experience produces on its own.
Before founding Roach Newton in 1993, Randy practiced at Vinson & Elkins and for 10 years at Mayor Day, Caldwell and Keeton, where he tried gross negligence cases and created the appellate group — and spent fifteen years representing insurers and their insureds, building the inside understanding of how claims departments think, how coverage positions are evaluated, and what arguments create genuine fear of an adverse published ruling rather than manageable concern about a modest individual loss.
Since 1993, Randy has practiced on the policyholder side — thirty years of policyholder coverage practice layered on top of the defense-side foundation. That dual perspective produces what single-sided experience cannot: a plaintiff-side strategy informed by intimate knowledge of what the defense side fears, and a defense-side strategy informed by intimate knowledge of how the plaintiff-side builds its most powerful arguments.
The result of forty-four years of practice, thirty-plus years of teaching, and sustained immersion in how reviewing courts think about the legal questions that matter most in coverage, tort, and commercial disputes is the IDP method: Identify the legal ruling the reviewing court would most naturally adopt; Develop it through rigorous challenge against every weakness and every counter-argument; Present it with the credibility and clarity of a practitioner who has stood before trial and appellate judges countless times and understands exactly what each level of the courts believe they need to hear.
Every lawyer at Roach Newton has deep experience in a major firm or complex appellate practice — and chose to practice here because of the quality of the legal problems and the rigorous standards brought to solving them.
John Newton is a nationally recognized trial lawyer, a Fellow in the American Board of Trial Advocates, and is double Board Certified in Personal Injury and Civil Trial law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. An honors graduate of UT Austin with a J.D. and LL.M. from UH Law Center, John began his career at Orgain, Bell & Tucker in Beaumont, where he served as regional and national counsel for major corporations in oil and gas, refinery accidents, complex commercial litigation, insurance coverage, products liability, and fraud. He has also co-taught Appellate Advocacy at UH Law Center. His partnership with Randy Roach began when a mutual client paired them as trial and appellate counsel in a major commercial fraud case — a collaboration that proved the power of the law-first approach to trial.
Manuel López focuses on appellate and commercial litigation, with a constitutional practice defending fundamental business rights in discovery and trial. Manuel earned his A.B. cum laude from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as Essays Editor of the Yale Law Journal. With over 21 years of civil defense experience, he has a proven record in appeals, extraordinary writs, dispositive motions, Daubert challenges, and error preservation at trial. Prior to joining Roach Newton in 2014, Manuel was a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, Defense Research Institute, and Products Liability Advisory Council.
Daniel W. Davis joined Roach Newton in 2006. His primary areas of practice include civil appeals and pre-trial litigation, with a focus on insurance coverage, products liability, contract litigation, and torts. Daniel began his career as a briefing attorney at the First Court of Appeals, then joined the Firm. He also served as a Law Professor at UH Law Center. Daniel earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.B.A. with honors from Keller Graduate School of Management, and a J.D. from UH Law Center, where he graduated magna cum laude and served as associate editor of the Houston Law Review.
Bob Cunningham has represented policyholders with insurance coverage problems, counseling clients on existing and prospective insurance programs and resolving disputed coverage and bad faith claims through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, trial, and appeal. He has also handled additional insured, indemnity, and contractual risk allocation matters. Bob began his career as a maritime litigator at Vinson & Elkins in Houston, then served as a Trial Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice representing the federal government throughout the Ninth Circuit. For almost three decades he has practiced insurance coverage almost exclusively. Recognized by Chambers USA (2006–present) and Best Lawyers in America (2008–present, including "Best Lawyer of the Year" for insurance in Houston), Bob graduated cum laude from Yale, earned an M.A. from Boston College, and holds his J.D. from UC Berkeley.
Mary Rader Harrell has been Counsel at Roach Newton since 2007, focusing on appeals and complex litigation. She began her career as a briefing attorney to Justice J. Harvey Hudson at the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals — an experience that gave her an early and deep grounding in how appellate courts approach legal rulings. She went on to practice litigation at Verner Liipfert and Baker & McKenzie before joining the firm. Mary also served as an Adjunct Professor of Appellate Advocacy at the University of Texas School of Law. She holds a B.S. in Political Science from Texas A&M University and a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center.
Roach Newton's CLE papers and judicial advocacy curriculum are not marketing materials — they are the intellectual record of a decades-long effort to advance Texas jurisprudence in insurance, appellate practice, and intentional torts. The same ideas that appear in these presentations appear in the firm's court filings.
When you engage Roach Newton, you are not hiring lawyers who have read about what judges want. You are hiring lawyers who have spent decades working through legal problems alongside those judges — hearing them explain, in real time, what makes a proposed ruling feel jurisprudentially sound or uncomfortable, watching them evaluate arguments across more than thirty different contract interpretation and coverage problems, understanding from the inside the principles they share and the values on which they differ. That accumulated knowledge — the range it produces across dozens of judges and staff attorneys, semester after semester — is the foundation of every argument, brief, and strategy this firm produces.
"Make the call before the record is fixed — because that is when the specialist can do the most."
Roach Newton is most valuable in specific situations — not as general counsel to a company, but as the specialist added to a team when the legal ruling is the hinge on which the case turns. The Roach Newton specialist makes it better.