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 Court recently examined an evidence question involving the admissibility of public records.

In Fleming v.

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 by applying the plain meaning of the words used unless it would lead to absurd

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. 

I am crunching the numbers for opinion dispositions by the Supreme Court of Texas for the calendar year 2019.  I expect to have a few blog posts showing how the numbers shake out.  Here’s what the initial numbers show:

  • During the 2019 calendar year, the Supreme Court of Texas disposed of 88 causes.  That’s 10