Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The deadly crash happened in December 2014 on an icy interstate near Odessa when a pickup truck carrying a woman and her three children crossed into the path of an 18-wheeler helmed by a driver trainee. Trucking and business interests decry the $116 million Harris County trial judgment as an outlier among commercial vehicle cases.
Thompson Coe litigation partner Matthew Kolodoski, a Republican candidate for the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas, will have to decide in the next few days whether he will challenge the official election results in his race against his Democratic opponent, Dallas Criminal Court Judge Tina Clinton. When votes were tallied on election night, Nov. 5, Kolodoski was unofficially declared the winner, leading Judge Clinton by 1,512 votes. But mail-in and provisional ballots were counted, there was a 3,000-vote swing in Judge Clinton's favor.
Wednesday afternoon, as lawyers left their offices for the long Thanksgiving weekend, Texas election officials quietly updated the official results of the race for the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas. The final vote tally shows that Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Tina Clinton received nearly 1,600 votes more than her Republican opponent, giving the Democrats a sole victory among the eight races for state appellate court. But lawyers say that state Republican leaders are pressuring its candidate to challenge the results.
A jury had sided with Nissan in March, issuing a take-nothing verdict in the lawsuit brought by Deana A. Rios following the April 2022 death of her husband. In a 46-page opinion issued Thursday and authored by Chief Justice Terry Adams, the panel held Harris County District Judge Fredericka Phillips had abused her discretion by granting Rios a new trial, in part by relying on inadmissible testimony from some of the jurors about deliberations in the case.
Not since the frontier days when Texas jurisprudence was being developed from Spanish law has there been a Supreme Court justice as influential as Nathan Hecht. While serving on the court for 35 years as a justice and chief justice, Hecht was a leader in the court’s transition from a plaintiffs-oriented body to one that pleased the business community with skepticism about large jury verdicts in tort cases. He played key roles in writing procedural rules that make litigation more efficient and vigorously advocated for civil legal services funding. As the longest-serving judge in Texas history hangs up his judicial robe due to state-mandated retirement, he recalls elections past and decisions that helped shaped the current court.
In an opinion dated Nov. 12 but not published to the court’s website until Monday, the panel found that “the trial judge has abused her discretion by failing to perform her ministerial duty to rule on Megatel’s motion to compel arbitration despite Megatel’s numerous attempts to set a hearing and request a ruling.”
The case implicated issues at the forefront of the American social, political and legal consciousness. Practically speaking, the decision has implications and reminders for employers in the education sector and beyond.
The news of an all-Republican sweep of the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas last week was premature.
Citing mail-in ballots and provisional voting from Dallas County and Collin County, multiple sources have told The Texas Lawbook that Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Tina Clinton, a Democrat, appears to have flipped the election results and won her race for the Dallas appeals court against Thompson Coe commercial litigator Matthew Kolodoski.
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