Insight & Commentary on Texas Appellate Law
My review of the statistics from the Texas Supreme Court’s dispositions in 2021 brought an assortment of facts to the forefront that are worth highlighting.
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Parties (and their counsel) to a court of appeals’ disposition of an appeal sometimes worry that if the court disposed of the appeal by issuing a “Memorandum Opinion” instead of an “Opinion,” the chances of obtaining review by the Texas Supreme Court will be diminished. Statistics in recent years have helped to dispel this concern. …
I ran the statistics for the Texas Supreme Court’s cause disposition for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2021, and the breakdown of broader statistics is shown below. As with prior years, I will follow up with additional data as I crunch more of the numbers.
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Early last year, I wrote about the split among the Texas courts of appeals on whether mandamus relief is available to challenge a trial court’s ruling striking a Section 18.001 counteraffidavit. Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 18.001 counteraffidavits are used by defendants to contest the reasonableness and necessity of a claimant’s affidavit proof of…
At a recent continuing education seminar, one of the presenters stated as a fact that amounts awarded in a judgment for prejudgment interest do not need to be included in the amount of a supersedeas bond. The presenter cited the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in In re Nalle Plastics Family Ltd. Partnership, 406 S.W.3d…
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. …
