General Commercial Litigation

• Lead Counsel for Jerry Newcomb in Joe Newcomb v. Jerry Newcomb, a bet the company struggle between co-founders of a two member LLC. Ben defeated a Temporary Injunction brought by Joe Newcomb to re-insert himself into corporate governance. Ben then negotiated and closed a complex multi-party resolution of ownership, and debt refinancing, which ultimately resulted in Jerry Newcomb’s complete ownership of the company, and ensuring the companies long term health and growth.

• Lead Trial Lawyer for the landlord in Best Value Auto v. Schiller Road Property, LLC., Cause No. 2017-53467 a commercial landlord tenant dispute, where the tenant alleged millions of dollars in losses stemming from a claimed wrongful lockout and eviction. Ben took over the case after years of inactivity, and handled the claims through trial on the merits, securing a take nothing judgment on behalf of the landlord, and a six-figure judgment for unpaid rent and attorney’s fees against the tenant.

• Lead Trial counsel for Glenn Massey, the Chief Growth Officer for a medical device startup company. Massey was alleged to have been part of a conspiracy by two of the companies three shareholders to deprive the third shareholder of his ownership interest in the company. After a two-week trial, the jury found no liability, not just for Massey but for all the defendants.

• Lead counsel for a former New England Patriot and Houston Texan Ryan Izzo, and his wife whose landlord sued them for breach of a residential lease, when he got cut by the Texans and moved to play for Seahawks. The Landlord alleged damages from early lease termination and claimed that the tenant was responsible for extensive water damage found throughout the house after moving out. Despite the undeniable fact that Izzo did move out early and stopped paying rent, Ben secured a take nothing judgment in his favor. 

Oil & Gas Litigation

• Trial counsel for a major oil and gas services company, who was sued by a customer who alleged that an entire product line was defective. In this confidential arbitration involving hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, among other things Ben handed the direct examination of his client’s corporate representative, and cross examined the Plaintiff’s corporate representative. The arbitration ended in a total defense verdict.

Trade Secrets Litigation

• Lead Counsel for NeuAg, LLC, in American Plant Food Corporation v. NeuAg LLC., et al., in which a former executive of American Plant Food was accused of breaching his fiduciary duty, misappropriating Trade Secrets and Confidential Information in starting his new venture NeuAg. The Plaintiff sought hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, Ben led the defense of the former executive and NeuAg. The Plaintiff’s dropped their claims against Ben’s clients on the eve of trial.

• Lead Trial Lawyer for Steve Harper, Polycarbonate Consulting Services, and Steve Harper Consulting in Trinseo S.A. v. Steve Harper et al., Cause No. 4:20-CV-0478. Harper, and the consulting firms he owned and operated were consulting in Polycarbonate technology. Trinseo, the current owner of Dow’s Polycarbonate technology, sued claiming that Harper and his team had misappropriated Dow Trade Secrets in their consulting work. Trinseo sought more than $6,000,000 in damages. After a month-long trial in the Southern District of Texas, and a mixed jury result, the Judge reduced the damages awarded against Harper to $0.

• Lead counsel for a Small Software Development Company in an AAA arbitration, where a former client of the Software Development Company accused them of misappropriating trade secrets during their work. Secured a total dismissal of the claims, and a partial reimbursement of the client’s attorney’s fees.

Employment Litigation

• Lead counsel for a day care worker during COVID who was sued for breach of an NDA for informing the parent of a child of a positive COVID test. Filed a successful Texas Citizen’s Participation Act (ANTI-SLAPP) motion, securing full repayment of the day care workers legal fees, complete dismissal of the lawsuit and $20,000 in sanctions from the Court.

• Lead counsel for a former employee who was terminated for reporting a kickback scheme. The Employee brought Whistleblower claims under Dodd Frank, however, his employer was not publicly traded, a traditional requirement for such claims. Ben took over the case after it had been thrown out repeatedly in the administrative process, but Ben won a motion to dismiss sequence in the Northern District of Illinois, securing the first reasoned opinion in the country, extending Dodd Frank Whistle blower protection to Employees who work for private companies but who report that their private company is defrauding a public company. Gryga v. Henkels & McCoy Group, Inc., No. 19 C 1276, 2019 WL 3573565, at *1 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 6, 2019).

• In addition to the above, Ben has handled myriad non-compete cases for employees and employers alike, having personally handled dozens of Temporary Restraining Order and Temporary Injunction hearings, and resolving many more without the need for court intervention.

Appellate

• Ben has personally argued multiple appeals in state and federal court and has briefed many more. Ben argued before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Data Engine Technologies LLC v. Google, 2017-113. In that case, Ben argued cutting edge questions of patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. §101, and secured what was at the time, one of the first decisions from the federal circuit finding patent eligibility for a software patent under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Intellectual Property

• Earlier in his career, Ben worked extensively with a family of enterprise software companies handling a series of high stakes software licensing disputes, while these cases resulted in a number of interesting opinions throughout the country, One of the most interesting disputes involved claims by a small Open Source company, XimpleWare, against Ben’s client, this case resulted in one of the few opinions nationwide that interpreted the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). XimpleWare, Inc. v. Versata Software, Inc., No. 5:13-CV-05161-PSG, 2014 WL 2080850, at *7 (N.D. Cal. May 16, 2014)

University of Chicago Law School, J.D. with Honors, Spring 2010

• 2009 articles editor for The Chicago Journal of International Law

• Thomas R. Mulroy Prize for Excellence in Appellate Advocacy. 

• Research Assistant to the Honorable Richard A. Posner.

Rochester Institute of Technology, Spring 2007

• Bachelor of Science, Computational Mathematics.

• Minors in Political Science and Philosophy

• Honors Program Graduate.

• Managing Editor, Reporter Magazine 2006.

• State Bar of Texas

• State Bar of Illinois

• United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

• United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

• United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

• U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas

• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas

• U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas

• U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Trial Bar

• Super Lawyers Rising Star, 2015-2018, 2020-2024.

• Super Lawyer 2025.