Last year, I reported that the Texas Supreme Court granted a record number of petitions for review in cases where the court of appeals had issued an opinion designated as a "Memorandum Opinion." The statistics seem to dispel the [...]
This past year presented some unique challenges for the judiciary, and specifically for the Supreme Court of Texas. The court confronted a pandemic, a ransomeware attack, and some unusual election-year court filings. In spite of these challenges, the court persevered [...]
Cases involving questions on the admissibility of evidence rarely rise to the level of importance that the Texas Supreme Court gets involved. Yet these questions routinely arise in the trial courts and are fundamental to trial practice. The Texas Supreme [...]
At a recent continuing education seminar, one of the presenters stated as a fact that amounts awarded in a judgment for prejudgment interest do not need to be included in the amount of a supersedeas bond. The presenter cited the [...]
Imagine that your trial counsel informs you that the trial judge has just made a significant adverse ruling against you, but then he tells you that you could file an interlocutory appeal of the ruling and challenge it now [...]
The Fifth Circuit and the Texas Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the high bar that must be met to find that the plain language of a statute violates the absurdity doctrine. Under the absurdity doctrine a court will construe a statute [...]
Two years ago, I noted that the data shows that the Texas Supreme Court grants a disproportionate number of petitions for review that come through certain intermediate appellate courts. One of those intermediate appellate courts is the Third Court of [...]
The Supreme Court of Texas handed down an opinion in Regent Care of San Antonio, L.P. v. Detrick in early May. The main holding in the case addresses the application of a settlement credit. But one short paragraph at the end [...]
The 2019 Texas legislative session made significant changes to an important provision of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code that aids parties in proving up charges for services without having to bring a live witness to trial. Section 18.001 [...]
For many years after the Texas Supreme Court adopted rules that divided the opinions issued by the intermediate courts of appeals into "opinions" and "memorandum opinions," many appellate practitioners privately concluded that if an opinion was designated "memorandum opinion," the [...]
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