Insight & Commentary on Texas Appellate Law
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…
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…
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 of the opinion has appellate practitioners talking.
The paragraph in question states:
“Regent Care
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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:
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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…
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.
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Continue Reading Texas Supreme Court Finds No Cause of Action for Intentional Interference with Inheritance
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
