• Trial
  • Antitrust and Trade Regulation
  • Corporate Governance
  • Securities Litigation
  • White Collar Criminal Defense

With 25 years’ experience as a trial lawyer, Tom Hagemann spearheads the firm’s white-collar criminal defense capacity in Houston and Dallas. His practice focuses on the representation of corporations and individuals in white-collar criminal matters. Mr. Hagemann has developed a national reputation for handling highly complex situations in areas such as antitrust, computer fraud, customs offenses, environmental crime, FCPA, health care fraud, public corruption, securities fraud and tax.

Before establishing his white-collar defense practice, Mr. Hagemann served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles (1985-1991), where he handled a variety of major federal cases, ranging from air piracy and narcotics prosecutions to government fraud and environmental crimes. He successfully tried a dozen cases, eleven of which were jury trials. Mr. Hagemann was awarded a Special Commendation from the Department of Justice in 1990 for his work in two trials, in which he prosecuted the largest bankruptcy fraud in the history of Los Angeles, including a former Assistant U.S. Attorney turned criminal defense attorney for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Mr. Hagemann served as Chief of the Office’s Financial Investigations Unit from 1989 to 1991. During this time, he prosecuted a massive police corruption case, U.S. v. Amers, et al., which reformed the narcotics section of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. Approximately 20 deputies were ultimately convicted, and as a result, Mr. Hagemann was nominated for the John Marshall Award, the Attorney General’s highest award for trial lawyers.

In 2002, Inside Houston magazine named Mr. Hagemann one of the city's best attorneys in three areas: Antitrust, Criminal Defense and White Collar Crime. In 2003, Mr. Hagemann was one of eight attorneys in Texas nominated by his peers to the International Who's Who of Business Crime Lawyers. He has been repeatedly named a Texas Super Lawyer by Law & Politics Media Inc., as well as one of Houston’s Best Lawyers in H Texas magazine, and was voted one of the Top 100 Attorneys in the Houston Area in 2009.

In the wake of Enron’s collapse and other securities and accounting fraud scandals, Mr. Hagemann has represented a number of high-level executives in a series of high-profile investigations and trials, including those involving AEP, Arthur Andersen, CMS, Duke Energy, Dynegy, El Paso, Enron, KPMG, Merrill Lynch, and Reliant Energy.

Other representative matters include:

• Represented a Fortune 400 company that was investigated for environmental crimes in what the government then touted as the largest environmental investigation in the history of the Southern District of Texas. After an intensive three-year investigation, the government declined to prosecute the company or any individuals.
• In U.S. v. Peterson, et al., defended a hospital administrator who was indicted on 60 counts for mail fraud related to patient admissions at a psychiatric hospital. After five months of jury trial in Houston, the trial court declared a mistrial and the government ultimately dismissed the case. The defendants’ application for attorneys’ fees under the Hyde Amendment is reported at U.S. v. Peterson, et al., 71 F. Supp. 2d 695 (S.D. Tex. 1999).
• Represented a Houston City Councilman accused of improperly receiving gifts. When the case was presented to the grand jury, the grand jury no-billed the charges.
• In State v. L.B. Foster Company, defended a company charged along with an employee, with illegal disposal of hazardous waste and used oil. After a jury trial, the company was convicted and the employee acquitted by the trial court at the close of the defense case. In a landmark opinion, the First Court of Appeals reversed the hazardous waste conviction - the battleground of the case - and rendered a judgment of acquittal, flatly rejecting the prosecution's novel theory of "passive disposal." L.B. Foster Co. v. State, 106 S.W. 3d 194, (Tex. App. - Houston [1st Dist.] 2003).
• In United States v. Brown, 459 F.3d 509 (5th Cir. 2006), obtained vindication for his client and “a ruling that has reverberated throughout the country” (NLJ, March 26, 2007) in dramatically reducing the scope of the “honest services” theory of mail and wire fraud.

• J.D., Yale Law School (1982)
• B.A., Rice University, magna cum laude (1978)

Articles

• Author, The Sea and the Mirror: Some Reflections On Corporate Honest Services Fraud and the (Hypothetically) Innocent Corporation, U.C. Berkeley Center for L., Bus. & Econ., Jan. 2010, http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclbe.htm.
• Author, Prosecuting Nonhuman Corporations in a Human System, Tex. Law. (Jan. 2004).
• Author, Impaled on the Damoclean Sword, Eur. Law. (Aug. 2002).
• Author, A Criminal Action? Ten Questions at the Gate, Envtl. Reg. & Permitting (Spring 2000).
• Author, The Mythology of Aggregate Corporate Knowledge: A Deconstruction, 65 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 210 (1997).
• Author, Confessions from a Scorekeeper: A Reply to Mr. Bresler, 10 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 151 (1996).
• Author, The Emperor’s Clause: District Attorneys, the Attorney General, and Section 382.095 of the Texas Clean Air Act, 24 Tex. Envtl. L.J. 167 (1994).
• Author, In the Name of a Greater Good: Beyond Law in Search of Order, Daily J. Rep. (May 1989).
• Author, An Issue of Character: Predisposition and the Entrapment Defense, Daily J. Rep. (Dec. 1987).

Books

• Author, "Passages: East-West by North-South," in Dimensions of German Unification (A. Shingleton, M. Gibbon and K. Mack, ed., 1995).

Speeches

• Speaker, Addresses at Various CLE Seminars/Meetings, White-Collar Defense Issues

Other Engagements

• Legal Commentator, Criminal Cases for Television and Radio
• Former Adjunct Professor of Evidence:
  • University of Southern California (USC) Law Center (1989 – 1991)
  • University of Houston Law Center (1994)

• Admitted to practice before:
  • Texas State Courts
  • U.S. District Court for all districts of Texas
  • U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth Circuits
  • U.S. Supreme Court
• Member, State Bar of Texas
• Member, State Bar of California
• Member, American Bar Association
• Member, Houston Bar Association
• Sustaining Life Fellow, Texas Bar Foundation
• Sustaining Life Fellow, Houston Bar Foundation
• Former Fellow, Robert Bosch Foundation, Stuttgart, Germany (1991 – 1992)

• Recognized, The Best Lawyers in America (Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith eds., Woodward/White, Inc.) (2008 – 2011)
  • Criminal Defense: White-Collar
• Recognized, The Best Lawyers in America (Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith eds., Woodward/White, Inc.) (2010, 2011)
  • Commercial Litigation
• Recognized, Texas Super Lawyer, Law & Politics Media Inc. as published in Texas Monthly Magazine (2003 – 2009)
  • Criminal Defense: White Collar
  • Business Litigation
• Recognized, Top 100 Lawyers in Houston, Law & Politics Media Inc. as published in Texas Monthly Magazine (2009)
• Recognized, Houston’s Top Lawyers, H Texas Magazine (2005 – 2008)
• Recognized, Houston’s Best Attorneys, Inside Houston Magazine (2003)
• Recognized, Who's Who Legal – The International Who's Who of Business Crime Lawyers (Law Business Research Limited) (2003, 2005)
• Recognized, Member of the Lawdragon 500 (2006)
• Recognized, AV Preeminent Rating (5.0 out of 5), Martindale-Hubbell Attorney Directory

• Board Member, Putney Open Door Fund, Putney, Vermont
• Former Commissioner, Police Officers’ Civil Service Commission, Houston (2002 – 2005)
• Former Board Member, Omega House, Houston
• Former Board Member, Main Street Theater, Houston (1998-2005)
  • Former Chairman (2001-2004)