bid for state attorney general when incumbent Attorney General Greg Abbott, who hired Cruz as solicitor general, decided to run for reelection. At Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Cruz represented Pfizer in a lawsuit brought by a group of public hospitals and community health centers, who accused Pfizer of overcharging. Linglong Tire was found guilty of marketing versions of tires that were based on blueprints stolen by a former employee of a Florida businessman and ordered to pay $26 million to the Floridian. Cruz worked on the Chinese company's appellant brief. The appeals court denied the appeal and affirmed the jury's award. Cruz represented drug manufacturer B. Braun before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit after the company was found guilty of wrongfully discharging a former employee. Cruz asserted that she had failed to prove that B. Braun had directed her to violate the law and that she had not presented sufficient evidence that her refusal to violate the law was why she had been fired. The appeals court rejected Cruz's argument and affirmed the $880,000 award. Cruz represented Toyota in an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court in a statute of limitations case, where a judge wanted to investigate Toyota for contempt after a former Toyota in-house lawyer accused Toyota of unlawfully withholding documents in a product liability case. Cruz unsuccessfully argued the judge's jurisdiction expired 30 days after the case was dismissed following an out-of-court settlement, but later won a second appeal using the same argument. Cruz defended two record-setting $54-million personal injury awards in New Mexico at the appellate level, including one that a lower court had thrown out. He represented a mentally disabled man who was allegedly raped by an employee of the facility where he lived, and the family of a 78-year-old resident of an Albuquerque nursing home who died of internal bleeding. The settlements were sealed in both cases. U.S. Senate Elections 2012 Cruz ran as a Tea Party candidate in the 2012 Republican primary, and The Washington Post called his victory "the biggest upset of 2012 ... a true grassroots victory against very long odds". On January 19, 2011, after U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said she would not seek reelection, Cruz launched his campaign via a blogger conference call. In the Republican primary, he ran against sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst. Cruz was endorsed first by former Alaska Governor