MacVane LLP
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MacVane LLP is a client-focused Houston litigation boutique. We handle commercial disputes, internal investigations, and white-collar defense, while also serving as outside general counsel to business clients.
Solutions for your thorniest business problems. Counseling when the stakes are at their highest. Advocacy in the courtroom.
Contract, partnership, construction, and real estate disputes for companies and individuals — from the demand letter through judgment and collection.
Internal and government investigations, federal and state criminal defense, and civil matters carrying criminal exposure.
Outside general counsel for companies and the people who run them. Price a risk, tell a bluff from a threat, decide how hard to push, or test your instincts against our experience — and get a straight answer, not a matter opened.
Business disputes do not reliably stay civil, and early judgments can have outsized influence. Disputes that take on separate lives in criminal, civil, and regulatory realms are sometimes called parallel proceedings. These proceedings can test blind spots, especially for lawyers whose expertise may be limited to a single arena.
We handle parallel proceedings for both those harmed by potentially criminal conduct and those facing accusations. For those harmed, we can offer strategies on whether to report, sue, or both, or neither — and in what order. And for those accused, we develop plans to defend a lawsuit and an investigation running at the same time without the solution in one becoming a problem in the other.
Your answer under oath in a civil case can become evidence against you in a criminal one. Asserting the Fifth might protect you in one and harm you in the other.
A grand jury, the SEC, or the Texas Attorney General asks for documents already in civil discovery — often because something in that case drew attention. What gets produced, withheld, or preserved now can shape everything that follows.
What you learn may have to be disclosed, and the investigation file itself may not stay privileged. Who investigates, how they do it, and under whose supervision, can matter from day one.
A partner, an employee, or a counterparty took money or records. Whether you report it, when, and to whom can change your civil case — your claims, your timing, your discovery, and what you can actually recover.
A petition alleging fraud or conversion against you can be a roadmap for a prosecutor. It can also be a threat dressed as a pleading, meant to force a settlement. Telling them apart, early, decides how you respond.
Most matters are only one thing, and we take those too — a contract case is a contract case, a criminal case is a criminal case. But some matters are both at once, and there, what you do in one forum can influence the other — sometimes dispositively. A lawyer can be expert in one and still guessing in the other, or worse, unaware it is there.
Some firms run one model and ask the client to fit it. We use fee structures and litigation plans prepared for the individual client and case.
John MacVane began in private practice as a trial associate at a large firm, and then served as an assistant federal public defender in the Southern District of Texas, handling criminal cases from motion practice through jury trial. In these cases, the client was indigent, the government had the resources, and the only advantage available was preparation.
John also completed two appellate clerkships — for Justice Brett Busby, then of the Fourteenth Court of Appeals and now of the Supreme Court of Texas, and for Chief Justice Linda S. Dalianis of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Before law school, John served five years in the Navy aboard the USS John C. Stennis, achieving the rank of Electrician’s Mate First Class.
In 2019, John joined Rusty Hardin & Associates, where he was elected partner in 2022. He remains of counsel to the firm.
John founded MacVane LLP based on a belief that resources should not dictate results. From his time as a public defender, John believes that the courthouse should not be closed to anyone. Unfortunately, sometimes it is. But sometimes it only appears to be, and John believes part of a lawyer’s job is to help clients whose rights have been violated find a way in. MacVane LLP is built around fee structures and litigation plans designed so that a client with a real case can afford to bring it, and see it through.
Yes. The same facts can support both a civil claim and a criminal charge, and they proceed on different tracks with different burdens of proof. The conduct alleged in a civil petition — fraud, theft, conversion — can also be reported to or investigated by law enforcement, and material produced in civil discovery can find its way to the government. The reverse also happens — the complaining witness in a criminal prosecution can become a civil plaintiff.
Parallel proceedings are a civil case and a criminal or regulatory investigation arising from the same facts and moving at the same time. Often all three are running at once — a lawsuit, a grand jury, and an agency like the SEC or the Texas Attorney General — each with its own deadlines and its own audience. The difficulty is that a step that helps in one can badly damage another, and the proceedings can move at different speeds — deadlines in one can force decisions in another that you might otherwise delay or avoid.
An agency — the SEC, the CFTC, OSHA, the Texas Attorney General, a state licensing board — can impose civil penalties, disgorgement, injunctions, or the loss of a license without any criminal charge ever being filed. The tools look familiar: document requests, subpoenas, sworn testimony. What makes them dangerous is that the agency is not the only audience. Testimony given to a regulator can be used by prosecutors, and agencies refer matters to the Department of Justice — sometimes running alongside it from the start.
Usually no one can force you to. But refusing may have consequences — Texas employment is often at will, and declining to cooperate could be grounds for termination. The more important question is the one people rarely ask first: whose lawyer is in the room. Counsel running the investigation represents the company, not you. Under Upjohn Co. v. United States, what you tell them is privileged — but the privilege belongs to the company, and the company can waive it and hand your interview to the government, a regulatory agency, or anyone it wants without asking you. Most lawyers conducting internal investigations will explain this before questioning you, in what is called an Upjohn warning. If you do not get one, ask. Regardless, if you’re worried about whether you should answer questions — or concerned about what might happen if you do so truthfully — you need to consult with your own lawyer, not the company’s.
Three things, and all of them are settled in the first days. Direction by counsel — running the investigation through counsel is what supports a privilege claim later, and privilege is not automatic just because a lawyer is in the room; it turns on whether obtaining legal advice was a real purpose of the work. Prompt document preservation — develop a comprehensive plan to preserve all documents and information early. Deleted material may seem like a side issue, but it can become the center of the story, and the deletion can become significantly more harmful than whatever was deleted would have been. Professional witness interviews — every employee interviewed should receive an Upjohn warning, documented: counsel represents the company, the privilege belongs to the company, and the company may choose to waive it. Neglecting to clarify the interviewer’s role can lead an employee to reasonably believe the lawyer was his. This can spawn disqualification fights, privilege issues around the use of the employee’s statements, and other problems.
The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination applies in civil proceedings, so a witness can assert it. The consequence is different, though: in a criminal trial the jury cannot hold silence against you, while in a civil case the factfinder may draw an adverse inference from the refusal to answer. That trade-off — real criminal protection against real civil damage — is usually the central strategic question.
It depends. Seeking a pause, or stay, of a civil case intertwined with an ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution is generally an early and central consideration in parallel proceedings. But stopping the civil case is not a matter of right. The civil court has significant discretion about whether to stay its case and typically considers how much the civil and criminal matters overlap, how far the criminal case has progressed, the burden on each party, and the interests of the court and the public.
Not always separate, but the two sides have to be coordinated by someone who understands both. Separate counsel does become necessary when interests diverge — most often between a company and an individual officer or employee, where what protects one can expose the other. Recognizing that conflict early is itself part of the work.
The subpoena has a return date and the civil case has its own schedule, and neither one accommodates the other. It’s important to have experienced criminal defense counsel coordinate with the prosecutor issuing the subpoena as soon as possible.
These answers are general information about how these situations usually work, not legal advice, and every matter turns on its own facts. If any of this is happening to you, call 713.489.2935.
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MacVane LLP · Principal office: Houston, Texas. This website is attorney advertising and is intended for general information only; it is not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Not certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. © 2026 MacVane LLP.