I have done the number crunching for Texas Supreme Court cause disposition for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2023, and ending December 31, 2023. The broader statistics are set out below. I will provide additional numbers and calculations in the coming weeks. During the 2023 calendar year, the Texas Supreme Court disposed of 100 causes, consisting of 86 causes taken on petition for review, 11 original mandamus proceedings, and 3 certified questions. One hundred causes is slightly higher than the average. Twenty-nine of the causes were disposed of by per curiam (unsigned) opinions. In ..read more

For pending and unreported cases, the 20th Edition of The Bluebook calls for citation to the LEXIS or Westlaw electronic report of the case when one is available. But if you are in the Fort Worth Court of Appeals, you would be wise to use the citation to Westlaw if it is available. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals’ website includes a section about practicing before the court. Included under that heading are the court’s Internal Operating Procedures. The section of that item that addresses briefs contains the following advisory: Because the court does not subscribe to Lexis, the court prefers t ..read more

            This term the Texas Supreme Court issued a succession of rulings favoring arbitration agreements and refusing to recognize various defenses.  It rejected a claim of unconscionability due to excessive costs, held a nonsignatory bound to arbitrate by direct-benefits estoppel, and held that incorporation of AAA Commercial Rules into a contract constitutes a clear and unmistakable agreement that the arbitrator not the courts would rule on arbitrability questions. Unconscionability due to excessive costs rejected In Houston AN ..read more

I continue to track the statistics on the number of petitions for review granted by the Texas Supreme Court where the court of appeals wrote an “Opinion,” versus those where the court of appeals wrote a “Memorandum Opinion.” My prior years’ statistical analysis have dispelled the notion that if the court of appeals writes a “Memorandum Opinion,” the Texas Supreme Court will be less likely to review it. The calendar year for 2022 only helps to further that conclusion. In 2022, 42% of the petitions for review that the supreme court granted and issued opinions involved “Opinions” issued by the co ..read more

Parties (and their counsel) to a court of appeals’ disposition of an appeal sometimes worry that if the court disposed of the appeal by issuing a “Memorandum Opinion” instead of an “Opinion,” the chances of obtaining review by the Texas Supreme Court will be diminished.  Statistics in recent years have helped to dispel this concern.  The statistics for 2021 continue to support the conclusion that the label on the court of appeals’ disposition doesn’t matter insofar as obtaining supreme court review. During 2021, petitions for review granted and disposed of by the Texas Supreme Court ..read more

I ran the statistics for the Texas Supreme Court’s cause disposition for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2021, and the breakdown of broader statistics is shown below.  As with prior years, I will follow up with additional data as I crunch more of the numbers. During the 2021 calendar year, the court disposed of 91 causes, consisting of 61 causes taken on petition for review, 28 original proceedings (27 mandamuses and one habeas corpus), and 2 certified questions.  The court disposed of 97 causes in 2020, 88 causes in 2019, and 98 causes in 2018. Twe ..read more

The Dallas Court of Appeals has held that the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (TCHRA) and its prohibition against unlawful employment practices because of sex, encompasses claims for unlawful employment practices because of sexual orientation.  This interpretation is the first for an appellate court in Texas and the court’s analysis follows the United States Supreme Court’s holding from last year in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020). Discrimination Claim The procedural posture in Tarrant County College District v. Sims, No. 05-20-00351-CV (Tex. App.—Dallas Ma ..read more

Last year, I reported that the Texas Supreme Court granted a record number of petitions for review in cases where the court of appeals had issued an opinion designated as a “Memorandum Opinion.”   The statistics seem to dispel the notion that there is an inherent bias against review of “Memorandum Opinions. In 2020, the number of petitions granted in cases where the court of appeals had issued a Memorandum Opinion returned to a level in line with prior years reviewed, at 35%.  In my view, this is still a hefty number when one considers that Memorandum Opinions (by court rule) ar ..read more