Resolving a longstanding uncertainty in federal district courts, the Fifth Circuit has held that the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) conflicts with federal procedural rules and therefore does not apply in diversity cases.
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Statute Making it a Crime for a Public Official to Circumvent the Open Meetings Act Held Unconstitutional
In a decision that upends decades of open meetings law, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that the provision of the Texas Open Meetings Act prohibiting a government official from circumventing the Act through a “walking quorum” or “daisy…
2018 Reversal Rates for Intermediate Appellate Courts
As I reported recently, the overall reversal rates for the fourteen courts of appeals is right at about the average from the past few years. There are a few individual courts that had some noteworthy numbers.…
2018 Texas Supreme Court Numbers are in…
With the close of 2018, the statistics for opinion disposition by the Texas Supreme Court are in. I’m still crunching numbers and will follow this post with additional statistics, but here’s what some of the preliminary data show for the…
Fifth Circuit Denies Attorney Fees Where Attorneys Created Claim for Purpose of Generating Excessive Fee Request
The Fifth Circuit has affirmed a denial of all attorney fees under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act based on the “outrageous facts” and the conduct of the plaintiff’s attorneys.…
Texas Supreme Court Finds No Cause of Action for Intentional Interference with Inheritance
The Texas Supreme Court resolved a longstanding debate and an unusual split in lower courts by declaring that there is no cause of action for intentional interference with inheritance.…
The Texas Supreme Court’s Docket, Part 3
There’s a perception in some appellate circles that if the court of appeals has issued a “memorandum opinion,” the chances of getting review by the Supreme Court of Texas are minuscule. A look at the supreme court’s statistics might change…
The Texas Supreme Court’s Docket, Part 2
Each calendar year, the Supreme Court of Texas agrees to hear and decide somewhere around 80 petitions for review. This is only a fraction of the petitions for review that come knocking on the court’s door. When the court grants…
The Texas Supreme Court’s Docket, Part 1
For well over a decade, the Supreme Court of Texas has been presented with more than 1000 different matters each fiscal year. These matters consist of petitions for review, petitions for writs of mandamus, certified questions, petitions for habeas corpus,…
Does Texas follow the “sham affidavit” doctrine?
A “sham affidavit” has been described as referring to an affidavit in which an affiant offers sworn testimony that contradicts the affiant’s prior, sworn testimony on a material point and the affiant gives no explanation in the affidavit for the…