Attorneys

Robert R. Bell is a partner in the firm's Amarillo office. He has been with the firm since 1993 and a partner since 2000. He focuses his practice in two primary areas: complex commercial litigation and appellate law. Mr. Bell's commercial litigation practice includes handling cases involving officer and director liability, legal malpractice, accounting malpractice, fraudulent transfers and creditor's rights. Mr. Bell has handled cases in these areas in Texas state courts, and in federal courts in California, Texas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

In 2004, Mr. Bell tried a case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. Mr. Bell represented the FDIC, as the receiver for the First National Bank of Keystone. In this suit, the FDIC sued Harald Bakkebo, claiming that he defrauded the bank in connection with the bank's mortgage-backed securitization program. After a seven-day trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the FDIC in the amount of $161,000,000.00. The Court subsequently entered judgment in favor of the FDIC for he full amount of the verdict. It is reported that this is the largest jury award ever achieved against an individual in West Virginia and it was the 11th largest jury verdict in the United States for 2004. The United States Court of  Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently affirmed this $161 million judgement.

Besides the West Virginia case, Mr. Bell has handled other cases involving both professional liability claims and fraudulent transfers. The fraudulent transfer cases include obtaining injunctions preventing debtors from making fraudulent transfers. In one such case, Mr. Bell and his firm were able to bust an offshore trust in the Cayman Islands and recover several millions of dollars for his clients.

Mr. Bell also practices in the area of appellate law. He has handled appeals in the Fourth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit, as well as in Texas intermediate courts and the Texas Supreme Court. A list of his published opinions is stated below.

Mr. Bell graduated from Baylor University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1982. He received his law degree with highest honors from Texas Tech University School of Law in 1993. While in law school, he was on the law review, the board of barristers, and state and national moot court teams.