Ask Houston trial lawyers about Judge Sylvia A. Matthews, and certain descriptions dependably recur: they say she’s smart, fair, well-prepared, smart, organized, hard-working, smart, efficient, decisive … and smart.
Those traits well serve Matthews, an experienced commercial litigator and trial judge, as she presides over pretrial matters in more than 150 (and counting) lawsuits stemming from one of the deadliest, costliest disasters in Texas history – Winter Storm Uri, the icy blizzard that paralyzed Texas and its electric grid last February.
“She is obviously very smart,” said Randy Sorrels, one of the state’s best-known plaintiffs’ lawyers and a former president of the State Bar of Texas.
“She’s got a good temperament. She’s fair. She keeps an open mind whether you’re on the defense side or the plaintiffs’ side. And when she makes a ruling, whether it’s for you or against you, you can be confident that she’s right on the law.”
John Zavitsanos, a partner with the Houston litigation firm AZA, said he and others in his firm have tried numerous cases before Matthews.
“She is very consistent,” he said. “She’s absolutely one of the most predictable judges I’ve been in front of – and that’s a compliment.
“I never had a situation with her, even if she ruled against us, where I had to wonder, ‘Where the heck did that come from?’ I didn’t always like her rulings, but I could always understand why she made them.”
David Beck of Beck Redden, another former state bar president – one more likely to appear as defense counsel for major companies – said he’s tried cases before Matthews, and “she did an absolutely superb job. She called balls and strikes fairly. She studied the law and made sure she made decisions that she thought were the right ones.”
Matthews, a former state district judge in Harris County, was appointed in July as the multidistrict litigation judge overseeing the pretrial proceedings in those 150 cases arising from the near-collapse of the Texas electric grid during Winter Storm Uri.
The suits involve nearly every kind of civil claim that could result from such a disaster, from wrongful death and other personal injury cases to breach of contract and other interruption of business claims. Defendants (and, in some cases, plaintiffs) include the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s electric grid, and virtually every major utility company that depends on ERCOT to supply power for resale to customers. The cases feature, on both sides of the aisle, many of the state’s best-known commercial litigators and biggest firms.
Multidistrict litigation (MDL) is a procedure to consolidate, for pretrial purposes, numerous complex civil cases pending in different courts but involving common questions. In Texas, it’s governed by a panel of five active or former appellate or administrative judges selected by the Texas Supreme Court (in practice, by the chief justice).
The judicial panel can order such a consolidation and send it to the district court of its choice if it determines that MDL serves the convenience of parties and witnesses and the efficiency of the courts.
“It makes sense for the same questions to be answered the same way,” the panel wrote in one 2009 case. “A legal system should not give different answers to a question, or allow repetitive discovery, or subject witnesses or lawyers to conflicting demands, simply because the cases are pending before different judges in different parts of the state.”
More than 4.5 million Texas homes and businesses lost electricity during the Winter Storm Uri, many for several days. State officials estimate that at least 210 people died as a direct or indirect result of the blizzard and outages.
The MDL is still in its early stages; it will be years before all the Uri suits are finally resolved. Matthews, under her appointment, has the authority – in place of the many courts where the suits were originally filed – to decide all pretrial questions, including jurisdiction, joinder, venue, discovery, motions in limine involving issues such as the admissibility of exhibits and expert-witness testimony, and motions for summary judgment and for dismissal.
Lawyers who know the judge say her experience, work ethic, temperament – and smarts – make her eminently qualified for the role, which will help determine claims amounting to billions of dollars and involving, potentially, tens of thousands of plaintiffs.
“She’s a very serious person,” Zavitsanos said. “You don’t clown around in her court. When you cite a case, you’d better be citing it correctly and honestly, because she’ll double-check you. And you’re in big trouble if you lie to her.”
“She’s a strict rule-follower. And she’s really smart.”
Beck noted that Matthews, who has served as a visiting judge statewide since her election defeat in Harris County in 2018, has been appointed previously to oversee complex, far-reaching MDLs.
“The fact that she’s repeatedly been asked to do it would suggest that she’s done a very good job,” he said.
Matthews promptly and politely declined to be interviewed for this article, saying in a one-sentence email, “The judicial canons of ethics prevent me from communicating with you about this pending matter.” She closed it, “Best regards.”
Matthews, 59, is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she was a member of the law review and the school’s national moot court team.
Her undergraduate degree from the College of Charleston is in mathematics. That alone is testament to her keen intellect among lawyers, the vast majority of whom (like journalists) would be lost beyond salvation if pressed to calculate the force of a falling lug wrench or the volume of an oval-shaped grain silo.
Before ascending to the bench, she was a litigation partner at Andrews Kurth (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) with a docket ranging from complex business disputes to defense of personal injury claims. She served on the firm’s diversity committee and throughout her career has been active in promoting opportunities for women in the legal profession.
In late 2008, then-Gov. Rick Perry appointed her to preside over the 281st District Court of Harris County as the successor to Judge David Bernal, who resigned.
A Republican, Matthews handily defeated Democratic opponents in the 2010 and 2014 general elections. Her most recent campaign finance report on file with the Texas Ethics Commission identified her campaign treasurer as Thomas R. Phillips, former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court and currently a partner in the Austin office of Baker Botts.
As a district judge, she consistently earned exceptionally high marks in Houston Bar Association polls. But like many of her GOP colleagues on the bench, she was swept from office in the 2018 Democratic tsunami that dramatically reshaped Houston’s courts.
In 2019, she began serving as a visiting judge around the state, with a specialty in MDLs. In addition to the Uri litigation, she currently has appointments to four statewide MDLs (two as a member of three-judge panels) involving more than 1,000 cases related to alleged underpayment of insurance claims.
All told, according to the biography on her website, she has presided over more than 175 jury trials and 160 bench trials.
Matthews and her husband, Murray Fogler, a noted commercial trial lawyer and name partner of Fogler, Brar, O’Neil & Gray, live in Houston’s River Oaks neighborhood. In her biography, she lists her interests outside work as theater, architecture, running and spending time with her family.
Like many (though far from all) members of the judiciary, she shuns the media spotlight. An internet search reveals almost no interaction with the press.
She was, however, interviewed in 2010 – during her first election campaign – by Big Jolly Politics, a website that covers politics in Harris County and statewide.
“I chose to leave private practice and become a judge,” she said, “because I wanted to make a contribution to my community through public service.” She described herself as a “hard-working, experienced judge who strives to follow the law. I’m the kind of judge you want deciding the issues.”
One other thing: “I am … smart,” she said.