Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The Texas Supreme Court tossed out a $416,000 jury verdict against Oncor Electric citing the failure of the plaintiff, Chaparral Energy, to take its initial complaint to the Public Utility Commission. The court ruled that PUC's "pervasive regulatory scheme" gives it the exclusive jurisdiction to resolve disputes over such regulated services. Janet Elliott has the details.
Ten years ago, Carmen Dusek found herself square in the middle of the largest child custody case ever litigated. The case involved charges of child abuse and rape in a remote compound run fundamentalist religious sect run by Warren Jeffs whose Biblical beliefs included a particularly strident form of polygamy. The case came to include scores of lawyers who volunteered from afar to assure adequate legal representation for some 400 children. She recalls the pride and disappointment to Janet Elliott in The Texas Lawyer.
SCOTX reversed two lower courts and remanded for trial a lawsuit brought by the survivors of two men killed in a 2007 West Texas car crash, as well as a man injured in the accident. The case involved fees paid to their employer to assure transportation between their job site and company housing and a 1981 case both sides relied on to make their case.
In two closely-watched cases decided Friday, SCOTX defended its seemingly conflicting views on state regulation of retained acreage. Chief Justice Nathan Hecht says it’s actually pretty simple: contracts mean what they say. Janet Elliott explains in The Texas Lawbook.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday invalid a complaint of same-sex sexual harassment. The behavior, which involved two female middle school teachers, was not shown the be motivated by sexual desire. Critics say the decision undermines the rights of workers at an important moment of social awareness. Janet Elliott has the details in The Texas Lawbook.
In hot pursuit of mineral leases in the frenzied 2010 Eagle Ford Shale play, Orca Assets paid $3.2 million for six leases in DeWitt County that they later discovered belonged to another company. Rather than simply accept a return of their cash, Orca sued the owner’s agent, accusing them of fraud, demanding $400 million in unrealized revenues. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court suggested that Orca should have known better. Janet Elliott reports on the court’s reasoning in The Texas Lawbook.
In a decision that could significantly impact school funding in the oil patch, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that statutory formulas setting valuations for business and personal property are not unconstitutional. Janet Elliott explains the ruling in The Texas Lawbook.
Proponents of binding mandatory arbitration scored two huge victories this week in the Texas appellate courts. In two separate and unrelated rulings, the Texas Supreme Court and the Dallas Court of Appeals ordered plaintiffs in two cases – a group of customers alleging they were illegally victimized by a payday lender and an exotic dancer suing a strip club for gross negligence – to litigate their claims through private arbitration instead of the public court system.
Patent agents who provide authorized legal services may invoke attorney-client privilege to withhold client communications, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. The ruling supports Andrew Silver, the inventor of tablet technology for ordering and paying the tab at a restaurant. Silver claims Tabletop Media failed to pay him for his patent and is fighting a Dallas trial court’s order compelling the production of emails between Silver and his non-attorney patent agent. The Texas Lawbook has complete details.
Mental anguish damages might be available in a case alleging negligent mishandling of a corpse, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday, sending a recently argued case back to a Brown County court for trial. The justices upheld a ruling by the 11th Court of Appeals in Eastland that Nelson, Lobban’s only adult child, had common law and statutory rights as next of kin to determine the disposition of his mother’s remains.
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