Mr. Veselka is one of the founding partners of Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, L.L.P.
Since 1976, he has been actively engaged in trying some eighty-plus jury trials and a similar number of bench trials and administrative proceedings across Texas, and in Arkansas, Colorado, California, Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C.
Mr. Veselka remains as active today. For example, in recent years he:
- has tried a weeklong trial in U. S. Bankruptcy Court for recovery of unpaid royalties against Chesapeake Energy on behalf of a large ranch owned by the Petty Family and related entities in San Antonio. The U. S. Bankruptcy judge entered a memorandum opinion that would award roughly $10 million to his client. The case then settled confidentially.
- has represented the fifty percent owner of a 100,000 acre tract in the Eagle Ford for unpaid royalties by Mesquite Energy worth $10 million with interest and attorney fees. The case settled on the Saturday before picking the jury in U.S. District Court on Monday.
- was engaged as lead lawyer to try a five-year-old construction dispute case going to trial in the next few months. His client, a general contractor, seeks $10 million dollars in damages, interest and attorney fees and the owner has brought a counter claim of a similar size.
He has briefed and/or argued sixty-plus appellate matters before various Texas Courts of Appeals, the Texas Supreme Court, the Wyoming Supreme Court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Tenth, Eleventh and D.C. Circuits.
Starting out primarily handling oil and gas litigation and energy regulatory proceedings, and returning to that practice cyclically ever since, he has handled numerous securities, contract, fraud, RICO, and business tort cases, mostly for clients in the energy industry. Since the revolutionary development of the shale production in Texas ten years ago, he has again focused mostly on oil and gas trials, arbitrations, and regularatory proceedings.
Along the way, he has advised both insureds and insurers on coverage issues and has successfully tried claims for coverage and bad faith. Mr. Veselka has both prosecuted and defended securities and consumer class actions, as well as shareholder derivative matters. Besides the complex civil cases which predominated in the early years of his practice, since the late 1980’s Mr. Veselka handles white-collar criminal matters at the grand jury, pre-trial, trial and appellate stages as well as SEC investigations and prosecutions.
Updated Sep 2023
