Insight & Commentary on Texas Appellate Law
It’s been a couple weeks since my last post–thanks to a bunch of deadlines. Here’s a little ditty I noticed discussing judicial foreclosures, and it got me to thinking up some interesting law-school type questions about the result.
The Dallas Court of Appeals affirmed a summary judgment awarding judicial foreclosure in Brown v. EMC Mortgage …
The San Antonio Court of Appeals recently disqualified former court of appeals Justice Sarah Duncan and her law firm–Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP–from representing a Relator in an original proceeding pending before that court of appeals.
According to the facts in In re Brittingham, when she served on the Fourth Court…
When Leland Dykes proposed to his girlfriend, Pepper Lee, he did so with a $26,000 diamond engagement ring in tow. He also bought a house for Pepper and put it in Pepper’s name. Leland protected his interest in the house through a Property Agreement with Pepper, but did not get a pre-nup covering that pricey ring. So, when…
The Dallas Court of Appeals recently discussed the difference between judicial errors and clerical errors and highlighted why it’s so very important to pay attention to the language in orders and judgments.
In In the Interest of N.E., D.E., & M.E., the trial court rendered a final judgment with a Mother Hubbard clause. The…
Personal Jurisdiction challenges is one area of the law that I’ve found interesting since I took Dean Frank Newton’s conflicts of law class in law school. Recently there have been a number of personal jurisdiction opinions that have come out. I’ve summarized what I see as the highlights of some of those cases below:
…
The Dallas Court of Appeals has held that a settlement agreement by Rule 11 did not support summary judgment because the client challenged her counsel’s authority to sign the Rule 11. In this case, a plaintiff settled a case by a Rule 11 Agreement. Later, she brought suit against the same party she had settled with…
In a brief memorandum opinion, the Dallas Court of Appeals affirmed that attorneys may be deposed as fact witnesses while counsel in the underlying litigation. Here, the trial court denied a party’s motion to compel the deposition of the opposing party’s lawyer. The court of appeals stated that "[t]he mere fact that a fact witness…
The Houston (First) Court of Appeals recently held that section 33.004(e) of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code does revive claims against defendants whose liability is solely vicarious.
Section 33.004(e) allows plaintiffs to join as defendants those designated as responsible third parties notwithstanding the applicable statute of limitations. Plaintiffs in this case filed suit against Wells Fargo…
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a Dallas Court of Appeals opinion holding that a temporary injunction that fails to set a trial date on the merits is a void injunction order. Now the San Antonio Court of Appeals gets into the act and reaffirms the strictness with which temporary injunctions are construed.
In Kotz …
Appellate practitioners know that winning an appeal is not always the end of litigation. Sometimes it’s just a new beginning of disputes, as my blog entry regarding the Supreme Court’s opinion in the In re Columbia Medical Center case indicates. But other times, it really is supposed to be the end. What happens if the trial judge doesn’t see it that way?
Last month, I blogged about a case called In re Victor Enterprises, Inc., in which the Dallas Court of Appeals granted a petition for writ of mandamus against Dallas County Court at Law No. 1 after the judge of that court granted a petition for writ of mandamus without requesting a response from the Relator, Victor Enterprises. The court of appeals held that such an act was clear error and granted mandamus. Now there’s more to the story…Continue Reading Mandamus to prevent exercise of jurisdiction where there is none
