Insight & Commentary on Texas Appellate Law
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 notion that there is an inherent bias against review of “Memorandum Opinions.
In 2020, the number…
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 Appeals District, informally known as the Austin Court of Appeals. That trend continues.
Focusing on…
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 chances of getting Texas Supreme Court review were substantially reduced. But in 2018, I reported…
I’ve run the numbers on the reversal rates for the intermediate appellate courts in Texas for the calendar year 2019. The overall reversal rate for the year was 77%. To clarify, when the Supreme Court of Texas granted a petition for review, it reversed the court of appeals 77% of the time in 2019. …
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.
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Continue Reading 2018 Reversal Rates for Intermediate Appellate Courts
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 2018 calendar year:
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Continue Reading 2018 Texas Supreme Court Numbers are in…
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 a few minds.
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Continue Reading The Texas Supreme Court’s Docket, Part 3
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 a petition for review the odds are very strong that the court is going to reverse the court of appeals judgment. Overall reversal rates range between 75% to 85% for the years 2014 through 2017, with the average reversal rate for all four years being 82.2%.
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Continue Reading The Texas Supreme Court’s Docket, Part 2
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, direct appeals, and a handful of other miscellaneous items. The bulk of the court’s docket consists of petitions for review, which are either denied or granted.
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Continue Reading The Texas Supreme Court’s Docket, Part 1
