An opinion issued by a Houston appellate court this week clarified when, or on what grounds, a judge can order a new trial based on information garnered from a member of the jury after a verdict has been rendered.
The opinion from the First Court of Appeals, issued Tuesday, came in a case where Harris County District Judge Sonya L. Aston presided over a jury trial and, post-verdict, heard a juror say she had explained to other jurors that when she worked as a paralegal at a “large, prestigious law firm” in downtown Houston the attorneys there charged more than $1,000 an hour.
Acting on that information, the trial court judge later granted a motion for a new trial in the landlord-tenant dispute. The First Court of Appeals determined that was incorrect because the comments from the juror, while “improper,” “did not constitute an outside influence,” and ordered the trial court to reinstate the verdict and judgment awarding $2,344.67 in actual damages and attorney’s fees in the amount of $93,545.10.
Deborah Lawson of Houston and Liza A. Greene of Missouri City, who represented the tenants on the winning side of the case, spoke to The Lawbook Thursday about their experience at trial and on appeal. lawson, who uses lowercase letters for her first and last names, said she felt confident immediately after researching the issue that the new trial order had been granted in error.
“This case really shows if we’re going to say that what happens in the jury room is confidential and it’s only among the jurors, it’s really strange to say in the next breath that you can have a new trial based on misconduct of the jury,” she said. “And how can you know if you’re not in the room?”
Greene said for her the case raises questions about the language in the standard jury charge and whether it needs to be amended to more clearly instruct jurors on what can and cannot be discussed as part of deliberations. To divorce yourself from all prior experiences as a juror and not allow those to influence deliberations is something she doesn’t believe is “humanly possible.”
Christopher A. Stevenson of Adair Myers Stevenson Yagi, who represented the landlord, DV Communities, told The Lawbook he knew based on legal research that he had “an uphill battle to show outside influence.”
“Because juror deliberations are, quite properly, held sacred as a matter of public policy, the bar to meet the definition of outside influence is really, really high,” he said. “The information the one juror gave to the others was not part of the evidence in the case and the jury was instructed by the trial judge to only consider the evidence. The juror’s communication was certainly improper, as were other examples of jurors improperly conveying or considering information outside of the evidence in cases in the appellate court’s opinion. But, unfortunately for us, there is a difference between something being improper and something being contrary to the law.”
Stevenson said he was hopeful that, based on the facts of this case, there was room for an exception that would waive the need to get an affidavit from the juror since the information that was the basis of the new trial order came from the presiding judge.
He said the case makes clear that jurors “can, and apparently often do, decide verdicts based on things outside the evidence presented at trial and contrary to the judge’s instructions and admonitions.”
“This makes the outcome of jury trials less certain when the universe of influences on the verdict is much larger than just the evidence presented,” he said. “That, to me, is a bad thing. But, it is a difficult balance between preserving the sacredness of deliberations and questioning a jury’s process.”
Paige Lauren and Raymond Taylor filed suit in Harris County District Court against DV Communities in November 2022, according to court records. The lawsuit stemmed from a dispute over repairs to a residential home they were leasing. According to the lawsuit, DV agreed to make certain repairs and suspended rent payments in the interim, then a year later began eviction proceedings and demanded $16,225 in back rent.
DV later dismissed the eviction lawsuit and told Lauren and Taylor that they would not be making the agreed-upon repairs and that the duo needed to begin paying rent or eviction proceedings would be reinitiated.
This lawsuit against DV followed. The jury returned its verdict in favor of Lauren and Taylor in June, awarding them $2,344.67 in actual damages and attorney’s fees in the amount of $93,545.10.
After the verdict was announced, Judge Aston visited with the jurors in the jury room. The lawyers for the parties, who also spoke to the jury before Judge Aston did, left the courthouse but soon thereafter received calls from the bailiff asking that they return to court.
By the time they arrived, the jury had been dismissed and Judge Aston informed the parties that she “had witnessed a juror, who was a paralegal at a large, prestigious law firm, tell other jurors that lawyers at her firm charged over $1,000 per hour,” according to the opinion.
Court documents do not identify which “prestigious” Houston law firm the juror formerly worked for. The conversation between the lawyers and the judge was not recorded.
DV Communities subsequently filed a motion for a new trial in July, supported by Stevenson’s affidavit detailing the unrecorded conversation about the juror’s comments. In the affidavit he explained he “thought it was inappropriate to seek an affidavit from the trial court” and that he “did not believe affidavits from any of the jurors were necessary and he stated he was uncomfortable contacting jurors,” according to the opinion.
On July 25, Judge Aston signed an order granting a new trial that reads: “After considering defendant, DV Communities, LLC’s motion for new trial, the response, the pleadings and arguments of counsel, the Court grants the motion and orders a new trial.”
That triggered a motion for reconsideration the following month from counsel for Lauren and Taylor, which was denied by the trial court in August. After appealing to the First Court of Appeals in September, it issued an opinion conditionally granting mandamus relief in October, explaining that the trial court needed to state its reasons for granting a new trial.
So, Judge Aston then issued a new order, vacating her July new trial order, but granting the motion for a new trial and stating her reasons. She wrote:
The case was tried before a jury. The jury had been instructed to not share their personal experiences, expertise or knowledge or those of others with their fellow jury members. A verdict was reached and read on June 5, 2025. After the jury was excused, the Court visited with the jurors with the bailiff present to thank them for their participation. The jurors had questions and provided comments about the process.
One of the jurors who is a retired paralegal from a large Houston law firm, announced that she had explained to the other jurors that her firm regularly charges $1,000 or more per hour for their attorneys and that the amount that the [p]laintiff’s attorneys were requesting was reasonable compared to what her firm charges. She also explained that she and one other juror worked to convince the other 10 jurors to come to the final determination on the jury charge.
Attorney’s fees issue is a central issue in this matter. The statement regarding the reasonableness of the attorney’s fees made by the juror was based on information from outside of [the] courtroom and in violation of the instructions that the Court had provided to the jurors. The juror’s statements were shared with the attorneys for both parties. Plaintiff’s counsel stated that they had heard similar comments and that the jurors had used a lower amount to calculate the attorney’s fees for the verdict.
Defendants moved for a new trial based on the information shared after the Court and counsel visited with the jury.
The Court finds that the juror’s statements and influence constitute an impermissible outside influence and is juror misconduct.
It is therefore, ordered, that the motion for new trial is granted.
Counsel for Lauren and Taylor filed a second petition for writ of mandamus in November challenging the October new trial order, arguing the reasons the judge stated in her order were not backed up by the record, that the record didn’t support a finding of juror misconduct, that statements made during deliberations do not constitute misconduct unless it concerned an outside influence and that the alleged statements made by the juror did not constitute outside influence.
“Relators claim that this evidence was insufficient to show jury misconduct. Real parties in interest argue that an affidavit from a juror was not necessary because the trial court heard about the misconduct while speaking with the jury,” the panel wrote. “We need not decide if this is sufficient to support a motion for new trial because, even if this evidence were sufficient, the alleged misconduct did not constitute an outside influence.”
The justices explained that in order to meet the bar for “outside influence,” the source of the information has to be someone outside the jury.
“Information gathered by a juror and shared with other jurors by that juror, even if introduced to prejudice voting, does not constitute an outside influence,” the opinion reads. The panel then quoted a 1989 opinion from the Corpus Christi court of appeals that held a juror injecting personal experiences into deliberations “though improper, does not constitute an ‘outside influence’ on the jury because it emanates from inside the jury.”
Greene also questioned whether the outcome in this case may impact the “common practice” of judges speaking to jurors after trial.
“Is this going to change the practice of jurors being able to specifically talk to the judge after the case is concluded?” she said. “I think if I were a judge I would be a little more leery about it. I don’t know that I would want to put myself in that position.”
Justice Clint Morgan authored a four-page concurrence.
“I empathize with the trial judge,” he began. “Hearing a juror explain that a verdict was based on something other than properly admitted evidence would be disturbing to anyone sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the laws of this state.”
“But Texas courts have made the policy decision that whatever justice can be gained by impeaching verdicts with juror testimony about deliberations does not justify the significant costs of the practice.”
Justice Morgan took the bench in January 2025 and before that served for 12 years as an assistant district attorney handling appeals in Harris County.
He explained he was writing the concurring opinion to address something the per curiam opinion did not: “Is a sitting judge’s personal recollection of extra-judicial information a sufficient basis for a new trial?
“Although the law is less developed on this issue, I think the answer is clear enough: No,” he wrote.
Even if the information the trial judge gathered from the juror in this case constituted an “outside influence,” he wrote, “there would need to be more evidentiary support than the sitting judge’s personal recollection of an event that occurred outside the trial.”
“Either the judge would need to be recused and used as a witness, or the party seeking a new trial would need to get testimony from someone with knowledge of the outside influence, like the former juror,” he wrote.
Justices Veronica Rivas-Molloy, Kristin Guiney and Morgan sat on the panel that decided the case.
The case number is 01-25-00984-CV.