Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
AUSTIN – (July 2) – In a 5-3 decision, the Texas Supreme Court Friday ruled against an effort to remove from office a county hospital district trustee who wanted to zero out the district’s tax rate. The state not only failed to establish a case for the trustee’s removal, it might owe attorney’s fees under the state’s “anti-SLAPP” statute. The Texas Lawbook has the story.
A Texarkana appeals court has issued an opinion that favors a Dallas E&P company in a mineral rights dispute in East Texas and provides clarity on right of first refusal clauses in oil and gas leases.
The Texas Supreme Court Friday delivered a one-two punch to a group of dentists and a state contractor who were pointing fingers at each other over allegations of massive fraud in the state’s Medicaid orthodontic program.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that there is no cause of action in Texas for intentional interference with inheritance, a ruling that will not allow the heirs of a wealthy oilman to invalidate a will change that gave a bulk of their inheritance to charities.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the City of Laredo’s plastic-bag-ban ordinance is invalid and cannot be enforced because it directly conflicts with a superseding state law passed in 2015.
The Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas will induct Chief Justice Wright as a Texas Legal Legend at the State Bar’s Annual Meeting in Houston on June 21.
SCOTX last week ruled in yet another dispute pitting the plain language of oil and gas leases against the variable technology of the industry. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that the Fourth Court of Appeals erred when it imputed a more stringent requirement for the placement an offset well in the Eagle Ford Shale than either the actual lease or the realities of horizontal drilling allowed. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
(June 4) – When James Ho left the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in January to become a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, he left a huge vacancy in the firm's appellate practice. Turns out the firm didn't have to look that far to replace him. Meet the other half of a couple some call "legal royalty" in Texas appellate law.
(May 31) – The Texas Supreme Court tried to simplify its earlier rulings on oil and gas titles with a remarkably simple principle: a new lease supplants an old lease unless the new lease says it doesn’t. The ruling is bad news for TRO-X L.P., who sought to collect from Anadarko on a “back-in” option in a lease long-since transferred. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
The 25-page opinion, written by Justice Jason Boatright, rejected all 15 issues raised on appeal by the Choctaw, including their argument that federal law should preempt state common-law claims involving a federally-licensed motor carrier.
After nearly two years of study, a Texas Supreme Court task force has recommended that the state adopt the Universal Bar Exam, an exam that essentially qualifies lawyers to practice
A 2010 column in The Dallas Morning News may have been “callous,” may have left out key facts and may have even portrayed a North Texas family of being deceptive about the death of their teen-aged son, but the article was an “opinion” piece that was “literally true” and thus not a breach of defamation laws in Texas, the Texas Supreme Court ruled unanimously.
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