Decorum broke down on Monday before a hearing began in Galveston County Court concerning a case involving plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Mostyn, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA), and state Rep. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood. Mostyn — one of the state’s leading trial lawyers and Democratic donors — confronts Taylor’s attorney, Joe Nixon, who in his former life as a legislator authored a 2003 tort reform bill limiting lawsuit damages. Mostyn berates Nixon about how he offered his services unsolicited to Taylor, who has sought to make public the fees earned by Mostyn and other lawyers who sued TWIA. Mostyn compares it to oft-criticized client recruitment by plaintiffs’ lawyers (ambulance chasing, in other words).

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