Texas Appeals Court Denies Meta’s Petition to Disqualify State’s Outside Counsel

The Texas Court of Appeals for the 6th Appellate District in Texarkana denied Meta’s mandamus petition to vacate a lower court’s denial of its motion to disqualify lead outside counsel for the state of Texas, Zina Bash of Keller Postman, in a lawsuit alleging Meta violated the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, said its memorandum opinion Wednesday (docket 06-23-00045-CV). The trial court was “well within” its discretion to deny Meta’s disqualification motion, it said. Meta filed the motion April 10, based on Bash’s work at Meta as a summer intern in 2012. Meta claimed Bash, though just an intern, had a law degree and was working in Meta’s legal department, making her a lawyer for Meta at a time when the legal department was especially focused on tag suggestions and the privacy policies surrounding them. Meta claimed Bash is “adverse” to Meta and her 2012 work was “substantially related” to the instant privacy case she was trying for the state. Texas responded by arguing Meta waived the issue by waiting so late in the case to raise it, and that it had knowledge all along of what Bash had done for Meta and possession of documents about that work.