Thirteen days after an oilfield services company was served with a lawsuit and a temporary restraining order, AZA Law had the company dropped from the case entirely. The speed is the story. Trade secret suits that open with a TRO usually settle into months of litigation before any defendant escapes.
The client, Hondo Resources LLC, provides water transfer services for drilling and fracking operations. In late May 2026, a direct competitor, Clearwater Resources, and its lender, Texas Capital Bank, sued Hondo in Lubbock County, accusing it of conspiring with Clearwater employees to steal job projects Clearwater was performing for an energy major.
Clearwater's complaint stacked the charges. It asserted claims against Hondo and two Clearwater employees for tortious interference with contract, conversion, unjust enrichment, theft of trade secrets, and violation of Texas theft laws. A Lubbock judge issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the defendants from a list of alleged activities.
A TRO is the opening move in this kind of case. Under Texas procedure, it can be granted quickly, often without the defendant present, and it freezes conduct until the court holds a hearing on a temporary injunction that would last through trial. For a business accused of stealing a competitor's work, the injunction hearing is the moment that matters. Lose it, and the company operates under court-ordered restrictions for the length of the litigation. The defendant's job in the days between the TRO and that hearing is to assemble enough evidence to keep the injunction from issuing.
Hondo hired AZA after the TRO came down.
Rather than settle in for a long fight, AZA moved fast and offensively. The firm sought discovery designed to disprove the plaintiffs' claims ahead of the injunction hearing, challenged Clearwater's discovery responses, and filed to compel the production it wanted. The pressure forced the issue. The evening before a required deposition, the plaintiffs dropped the lawsuit against AZA's client. The case against a Clearwater employee still stands.
"It took us only 13 days after our client was served with the lawsuit and TRO to obtain dismissal of all claims asserted against it. It was a terrific result," said Jordan Warshauer, the lead lawyer, who handled the case with Todd Mensing and Nicholas Petree.
The sequence matters. The plaintiffs withdrew on the eve of a deposition, after AZA had pushed for the discovery that would test the allegations under oath. A party confident in its trade secret claim does not typically drop it the night before it gets to question the defendant. The timing suggests the claims could not survive the scrutiny that AZA's discovery campaign was about to apply.
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Texas trade secret claims run under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act, codified at Chapter 134A of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. The statute lets a plaintiff seek injunctive relief and damages, but it also requires the plaintiff to identify an actual trade secret and show misappropriation. Those requirements are easy to allege and harder to prove, which is why the early phase of a case carries so much weight.
A plaintiff who obtains a TRO holds the initiative for a short window. If the defendant can use that window to demand the specifics, what exactly was taken, how it qualifies as a trade secret, what evidence ties the defendant to the alleged theft, the plaintiff has to either produce proof or retreat. Expedited discovery turns a one-sided TRO into a two-sided contest before the injunction hearing locks in restrictions.
The Hondo result is a clean example. AZA did not wait for the plaintiffs to set the pace. It pushed discovery, contested the responses, and forced a deposition that the plaintiffs apparently preferred to avoid. The defense worked because it compressed the timeline rather than extending it.
For companies in competitive industries, the case is a reminder that the response to a trade secret suit is often decided in its first two weeks. A defendant that treats a TRO as the start of a long siege cedes the initiative. A defendant that immediately tests the plaintiff's proof can sometimes end the case before the cost and the court-ordered restrictions accumulate.
The result also reflects how AZA approaches this work. The firm lists trade secrets and covenants not to compete among its practice areas and handles the disputes on both sides. The Hondo defense paired aggressive discovery with a willingness to head toward a hearing rather than away from it, the same trial-forward posture the firm brings to its larger commercial matters. The difference here is that the posture ended the case in 13 days rather than winning it at trial.
