Hondo Resources LLC, an oilfield water transfer services provider, was served with a lawsuit and an ex parte temporary restraining order in June 2026. The claims: tortious interference, conversion, trade secret theft. Thirteen days later, every one of them against Hondo was dismissed.
Clearwater Resources and lender Texas Capital Bank filed the suit in Lubbock County, naming a former Clearwater employee as an additional defendant alongside Hondo. Jordan Warshauer led AZA Law’s defense team. Todd Mensing and Nicholas Petree worked the matter from the outset, when the restraining order left little time to build a strategy before responding in court.
What Happened Inside Two Weeks
A restraining order (which Hondo was hit with before it had even hired lawyers) paired with a trade secret complaint usually signals a lawsuit built for the long haul: discovery fights, expert reports, months of motion practice before anything resolves. AZA’s team didn’t wait around. They pushed aggressive discovery early and challenged the plaintiffs’ own responses instead of settling into the plaintiffs’ preferred timeline.
That pressure produced a motion to compel demanding specific proof underlying the claims against Hondo. The plaintiffs dropped their case against Hondo the evening before a scheduled deposition of their corporate representative, a timing detail that suggests the deposition itself was the point they’d rather not reach. Warshauer put it directly: “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.”
A Claim That Didn’t Survive Scrutiny
Every claim against Hondo was dismissed. The case against the former Clearwater employee, individually, stayed active. That split matters: it shows the dismissal turned on the specific allegations against Hondo, and AZA’s proactive and vigorous defense, not a broader settlement covering every defendant at once. Trade secret claims against a company are only as strong as the evidence tying that company, rather than an individual who once worked for a competitor, to the alleged misappropriation. A 13-day timeline suggests the evidence didn’t hold up once it was tested through discovery and a tenacious and focused defense effort.
Cases built around a temporary restraining order run on a compressed clock from the day they’re filed, since the order itself usually forces an early hearing and pushes both sides to move fast instead of settling into the slower pace of ordinary civil litigation. That compression can work against a defendant without the resources to respond quickly. It’s part of why AZA’s 13-day result stands out.
Moving straight into aggressive discovery, instead of waiting to see how the restraining order played out, put pressure back on the plaintiffs before they’d fully built their case against Hondo specifically. The claims against the former Clearwater employee, filed under the same original petition, stayed unresolved after Hondo’s exit from the case.
