22-0631·Petition For Review
- The Railway Labor Act does not preempt a pilots' union's state-law misrepresentation and tortious-interference claims against Boeing over the 737 MAX, because resolving them is not substantially dependent on interpreting the collective bargaining agreements: the claims turn on whether Boeing's alleged misrepresentations induced the union to agree in 2016 to fly the MAX, and the union could have declined to do so regardless of what the 2006 agreement required.
- The pilots' assignments of their claims to their union are not void as against public policy, giving the union standing as assignee, though it must prove each pilot's injury and the trial court retains discretion over joinder, consolidation, and severance.
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22-1124·Other
- The Court denied Boeing's petition for review of a court of appeals decision reversing a Rule 91a dismissal of the union's second suit as assignee of 8,794 pilots, without opinion.
- The petition asked whether a court may decide a res judicata defense on a Rule 91a motion by considering an uncontested public record of a prior suit attached to the defendant's answer.
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23-0045·Other
- Texas's civil barratry statute, Government Code § 82.0651(a), does not reach non-Texas clients' claims to void legal-services contracts that were solicited and procured outside Texas: the statute does not clearly apply extraterritorially, and the conduct it focuses on, the solicitation that procured the contract, occurred in Louisiana and Arkansas, so applying it would be impermissibly extraterritorial even though some financing occurred in Texas.
- The clients' fiduciary-duty claims against the lawyers are independent of the barratry statute and survive: res judicata from a Louisiana fee proceeding, limitations, and improper joinder did not entitle the lawyers to summary judgment on them.
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23-0167·Petition For Review
- The Division of Workers' Compensation does not have exclusive jurisdiction to decide whether an injury was work-related when the employer raises the issue only as an exclusive-remedy defense to an employee's negligence suit and the employee's requested relief does not depend on entitlement to benefits, so the district court may decide it and the employee need not first exhaust administrative remedies.
- The Court disapproved contrary court of appeals decisions, noting that prudential abatement may be warranted if parallel proceedings are pending before the Division and that employees should still file timely compensation claims to protect their rights.
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23-0192·Petition For Review
- The Court held that Texas has no "public-interest exception" to mootness: because the Texas Constitution limits courts to the "judicial power" and to live "cases," a moot dispute cannot be decided on the merits however important the question, and the only proper judgment is dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.
- Detained mothers' state-law challenge to a rule licensing two family immigration-detention centers was moot after their release, the capable-of-repetition exception failed because their re-detention at those facilities with a child for a long enough time was speculative, and the Court vacated the court of appeals' merits ruling striking the rule and dismissed the case without prejudice.
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23-0317·Petition For Review
- Parents' negligence claims against a physician whose letters described a patient's "service animals" are not health care liability claims requiring an expert report, because the alleged failure to ascertain a dog's temperament toward strangers is not a departure from accepted standards of medical care, no medical expert is needed to prove the standard of care, breach or causation, and any presumption that the claim is a health care liability claim is inapplicable or rebutted.
- The plaintiffs, who were strangers to the physician-patient relationship, had standing at the pleading stage, since their allegations reasonably traced the dog attack in part to the doctor's letters, which emboldened the owner to bring the dog into public places.
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23-0329·Petition For Review
- A partner's appellate brief that argued he had standing to assert derivative claims and that the defendant owed fiduciary duties to the business entities did not waive his appeal of the dismissal of those derivative claims, so the court of appeals must reach them.
- Fact issues do not preclude summary judgment against a partner's claim that his co-venturer owed him individual fiduciary duties, because the claim was not properly asserted or established in the trial court and he conceded it made no difference given his derivative claims; the court of appeals also correctly held fact issues on limitations and that the Dead Man's Rule bars the surviving partner's testimony that the decedent approved the expenditures.
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23-0365·Petition For Review
- A deed restriction that "[n]o more than two residences may be built on any five acre tract" limits density, not tract size, and the only reasonable implication from its text is that one residence may be built on a sub-five-acre platted tract, so the restriction does not bar a developer from building one house on each of 73 one-to-two-acre lots carved from 100 restricted acres; the Court rendered judgment against the neighbors.
- In a changed-conditions defense or counterclaim to a deed restriction, the factfinder must consider all changes since the restriction was created, not only those after the current owner bought, so the jury instruction was erroneous and a new trial is needed; the Court also held the neighbors did not waive the restriction and that nonparty landowners and the State are not necessary parties.
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23-0634·Petition For Review
- A trial court errs by granting a Texas Citizens Participation Act motion to dismiss after the statute's 30-day ruling deadline has passed and the motion was overruled by operation of law, but the error is harmless and does not warrant reversal if the ruling comes within the 20-day period in which the movant could have appealed the denial by operation of law; the order is not void.
- Collateral estoppel from a federal personal-jurisdiction dismissal did not entitle the defendants to summary judgment, because they did not conclusively show that the purposeful-direction findings are identical to the issues that decide the Texas tort claims, or that two new defendants were in privity with the Colorado defendants.
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23-0662·Petition For Review
- A Dram Shop Act plaintiff can rely on circumstantial evidence such as a BAC test taken hours later, but it must be linked to other probative evidence that the customer was obviously intoxicated to the extent of a clear danger when the provider served him; speculation about how a customer would have looked, drawn from a BAC result, is no evidence.
- The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying a continuance of the summary-judgment hearing where the plaintiff had 561 days to depose the owner and did not show the testimony would be material.
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23-0703·Petition For Review
- Business Organizations Code § 22.207, which lets a religious conference elect and control the board of a nonprofit educational corporation, protects the Conference's authority to sue SMU to enforce its rights under the articles of incorporation, so § 20.002's limit on who may challenge ultra vires acts does not bar the suit.
- SMU's articles are not a contract between SMU and the Conference, but the articles are a contract between SMU and the State, and given § 22.207 and the articles' express grants of rights, the Conference may pursue its breach-of-contract claim as a third-party beneficiary; SMU was entitled to summary judgment on the false-filing claim because the certificate of amendment, read as a whole, was not materially false.
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23-0707·Petition For Review
- The deadline to object to a special commissioners' condemnation award runs from the day the award is filed with the trial court clerk: filing "with the court" under Property Code § 21.018(a) includes the clerk, so the State's objection filed after that period was untimely.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the trial court's judgment adopting the commissioners' $1.1 million award.
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23-0711·Petition For Review
- The Court denied rehearing of its denial of the petition for review in a $1,000 Texas Payday Law dispute in which an employer's suit for judicial review was dismissed for want of jurisdiction because it was filed in Harris County rather than the claimant's home county, and Justice Young, joined by Justice Busby, concurred in the denial.
- The concurrence said two issues raised on rehearing merit further consideration in a suitable case: whether a suit that names the Workforce Commission only as a required defendant is truly a suit "against a governmental entity" under Government Code § 311.034, and whether a mandatory-venue provision is a "statutory prerequisite to suit" that carries jurisdictional consequences.
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23-0755·Mandamus
- When an underinsured-motorist insured sues for a declaratory judgment on her entitlement to benefits and also asserts extracontractual Insurance Code claims, the trial court must abate the extracontractual claims and the related discovery until the insured obtains a judgment establishing UIM coverage.
- A UIM insurer with no personal knowledge of the crash that has stipulated to matters within its knowledge, produced its nonprivileged claim file and supported its proportionality objections with evidence is entitled to have a notice to depose its corporate representative quashed during the coverage phase.
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23-0756·Petition For Review
- Texas courts lack specific personal jurisdiction over an Austrian aircraft-engine manufacturer whose engine reached Texas only through an independent Bahamian distributor's territory-wide distribution agreement, because the stream-of-commerce-plus test requires conduct specifically targeting Texas; mere foreseeability that products will arrive, a general worldwide or hemispheric distribution agreement, a passive website, and third parties' registration and repair of engines are not enough.
- Rotax and its independent distributor are distinct entities, so the distributor's activities cannot be attributed to Rotax absent agency or alter-ego proof, and a manufacturer's instruction not to ship to sanctioned countries does not mean it has availed itself of every other forum.
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23-0767·Petition For Review
- Under the constitutional-avoidance doctrine, the Court vacated lower-court judgments that dismissed as a nonjusticiable political question a challenge to a city's regulation of nonvoting residents of its extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) under the Texas Constitution's republican-form-of-government clause, because a 2023 law lets ETJ property owners unilaterally opt out of a city's ETJ.
- The case is remanded with instructions to abate so the property owners can use the statutory release process; if they do not do so within a reasonable time, the suit may be dismissed because any injury would result from their choice to remain subject to the ordinances.
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23-0875·Petition For Review
- A former owner cannot set aside a subsequent purchaser's title on due-process grounds, even after a defective tax-suit citation by publication, if she received notice of the default judgment or of the property's sale during the two-year statutory period to redeem or sue, because she then had an adequate remedy at law.
- A subsequent purchaser may also raise equitable defenses such as laches against a former owner who learned of the judgment or sale after limitations ran but unreasonably delayed, to the purchaser's detriment; because the record did not show when the owner received notice, the Court affirmed the remand.
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23-0953·Petition For Review
- When a counteraffidavit challenges only part of the medical charges in a Section 18.001 affidavit, the unchallenged portions remain competent evidence and may go to the jury, with the controverted portions redacted.
- A counteraffidavit attesting that a portion of the charges is reasonable is likewise admissible to support that portion of the claim.
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23-0955·Petition For Review
- The TCPA applies to a claim for negligent hiring, training or supervision when at least one of the underlying tortious acts, such as an employee's allegedly false theft accusation to police, is based on or in response to the defendant's exercise of the right of free speech; the court of appeals wrongly required that the claim be "entirely" based on protected activity.
- The plaintiff did not carry her burden to avoid dismissal, because she offered no evidence of the employee's hiring, training or supervision, a standard of care, a breach, or proximate cause, so the Court rendered judgment dismissing the negligent-hiring claim.
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23-0993·Petition For Review
- A motion to compel discovery and for monetary sanctions is not a "legal action" subject to dismissal under the Texas Citizens Participation Act, because under the ejusdem generis canon the statute's catch-all covers only filings like a lawsuit, petition, cross-claim or counterclaim, which start or materially amend a proceeding on a substantive claim.
- A party facing such a motion should oppose it or seek Chapter 10 or Rule 13 sanctions for frivolousness, not file a TCPA motion, which would stay discovery and trigger an interlocutory appeal over an ancillary dispute.
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23-1015·Other
- A plaintiff who produced only the truck driver's own deposition testimony and two photographs failed to raise more than a scintilla of evidence that the driver breached his duty of care when a tire suddenly lost air and his tractor-trailer jackknifed across two interstate lanes, because an accident's occurrence is not itself evidence of negligence and no evidence showed what a prudent driver would have done.
- Summary judgment may rest on the uncontroverted testimony of an interested witness the nonmovant himself offered, and the plaintiff, not the defendant, bears the burden to prove an accident was not "unavoidable" or the conduct "unexcused," so the defendant properly used a no-evidence motion.
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23-1035·Other
- The Court conditionally granted mandamus and ordered dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds of a Texas suit over a bus crash in Mexico, because all six factors of Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 71.051(b) favored a Mexican forum, given Greyhound's stipulations to Mexican jurisdiction and to waive limitations.
- Foreign-law determinations are reviewed de novo under Rule of Evidence 203, a plaintiff's refusal to consent to an alternate forum is irrelevant to its availability, and "comparative analysis" of remedies matters only if the forum would provide no remedy at all; Greyhound neither judicially admitted Texas was a proper forum nor waived the motion by filing an alternative crossclaim.
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23-1039·Mandamus
- The proportionate-responsibility statute applies to an employee's negligence suit against an employer that does not subscribe to workers' compensation, because that suit seeks damages, not "an action to collect workers' compensation benefits," and the Workers' Compensation Act does not bar a nonsubscriber from designating responsible third parties.
- A trial court abuses its discretion by striking a nonsubscribing employer's responsible-third-party designation where the record raises a fact issue on the third parties' responsibility, and the employer has no adequate appellate remedy.
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24-0005·Petition For Review
- Under the pre-April 2022 version of Rule of Civil Procedure 306a(4), a party who did not receive clerk's notice of a judgment by first-class mail and did not in fact become aware of the judgment within 20 days is entitled to a deadline extension even if the clerk emailed notice that counsel never read, because "actual knowledge" means subjective awareness, not constructive knowledge.
- Notice and actual knowledge are alternative conditions: if the clerk fails to deliver notice as the rule requires, actual knowledge independently defeats an extension, but merely receiving an unread email does not amount to it.
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24-0024·Mandamus
- Individual shareholders of a Maryland real estate investment trust may not sue the trust's advisors directly on an advisory agreement that says the advisor is in a fiduciary relationship "to the Trust and its Shareholders," because the phrase refers to the shareholders collectively and creates no duty to individual shareholders distinct from the duty to the entity.
- The shareholders therefore lack capacity to bring claims the trust owns and must pursue them derivatively under the trust documents' exclusive Maryland forum, so the trial court erred in denying the advisors' plea in abatement and the Court conditionally granted mandamus directing dismissal with prejudice.
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24-0040·Other
- Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 15.003(b) permits an interlocutory appeal of a venue ruling in a multi-plaintiff case only where the trial court had to decide whether a plaintiff independently established proper venue; it does not apply merely because there are multiple plaintiffs, so the general bar on interlocutory venue appeals in § 15.064(a) controls where plaintiffs assert identical claims on identical venue facts.
- The court of appeals therefore lacked jurisdiction over the interlocutory venue appeal, and the Court vacated its judgment without reaching whether Dallas County was a proper venue.
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24-0090·Petition For Review
- The Court denied Ageron Energy's petition for review of a dismissal of its trespass and nuisance suit over hydrogen sulfide injected by ETC that ruined its drilling attempt, and Justice Busby, joined by Justice Devine, concurred to explain that the court of appeals made two legal errors even though its result may be right.
- The concurrence said res judicata bars only claims that were ripe and could have been litigated in an earlier suit, and that a mineral lessee's claim accrues when the trespass infringes its ability to explore, obtain, produce and possess the minerals, not when gas reaches a location or a drilling attempt fails.
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24-0149·Mandamus
- A trial court may order alternative security to supersede a money judgment under Rule of Appellate Procedure 24.1(a)(4) even for a judgment debtor whose net worth is $10 million or more; Rule 24.2(e), which requires alternative security for debtors under that threshold, is not the exclusive source of the authority, so the court of appeals erred in holding alternative security categorically unavailable.
- The Court found no abuse of discretion in the trial court's $147 million net-worth finding, which rested on crediting one side's valuation experts, and noted that tendering the very property whose valuation drove a $25 million bond generally will be adequate alternative security absent a particular need.
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24-0172·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus, without prejudice, to State Farm's challenge to a trial court's refusal to sever and abate extracontractual claims and to quash corporate-representative and adjuster depositions in a UIM case, so the trial court can revisit its rulings under the guidance the Court gave the same day in In re State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (No. 23-0755).
- The Court also denied, without prejudice, the related petition challenging sanction orders (No. 24-1052) and a dozen other pending UIM mandamus petitions raising the same issues.
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24-0183·Petition For Review
- A court of appeals erred in holding an appellant forfeited its argument that invoices were not valid and enforceable contracts because its brief cited no cases or statutes, since its roughly five pages of argument with record citations adequately challenged the trial court's determination; there is no minimum quotient of citations to authority.
- Forfeiture through inadequate briefing should be a last resort, and on remand the court of appeals may order supplemental briefing under Rule 38.9 or decide the merits on the briefing it has, but may not litigate the case for a party.
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24-0205·Petition For Review
- A no-answer default judgment against two LLCs was reversed because the record did not show the Secretary of State forwarded process to the addresses the statute requires, the most recent addresses on file, so strict compliance with substituted service was not shown.
- A Whitney certificate showing that process was forwarded does not by itself establish that it went to the statutorily required addresses.
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24-0207·Petition For Review
- Texas courts lack specific personal jurisdiction over a South Korean fuel-pump manufacturer that designed the pump for the North American region and knew it was sold in Texas, because designing a product for a large region that includes Texas makes arrival foreseeable but is not additional conduct targeting Texas; a replacement pump bought at a Texas dealer, an English-language website, and the automaker's U.S. sales do not show targeting either.
- The trial court did not abuse its discretion in overruling a personal-knowledge objection to the manufacturer's affidavit, which laid a foundation through the affiant's seventeen years of roles, meetings attended, and documents reviewed.
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24-0221·Petition For Review
- The Court denied a motion for rehearing on March 7, 2025, of its September 27, 2024 denial of Reynaldo Gonzalez's petition for review of a suit under Election Code § 253.131; Chief Justice Blacklock and Justice Sullivan noted their dissent from the denial of rehearing without writing.
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24-0236·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus in a suit by two women who were sexually abused by family members against Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which challenged the civil-conspiracy claim under Rule 91a and the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine, and Chief Justice Blacklock, joined by Justices Devine and Sullivan, dissented from the denial.
- The dissent would have granted the petition and required repleading because the petition's main link between Gothard and the abuse is the content of his religious teachings on authority, sexuality and family, which the dissenters said cannot be tried in a Texas court.
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24-0239·Mandamus
- The Court denied Novartis's petition for writ of mandamus challenging a qui tam suit under the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act (now the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act) on relator standing and separation-of-powers grounds, and Justices Young and Sullivan issued a statement.
- The statement said the issues are weighty and the Court might have set the case for argument, but denial is understandable because the new Fifteenth Court of Appeals has statewide jurisdiction and, under In re Sanofi-Aventis, may hear mandamus petitions like this one, so the Court awaits its written analysis of the Act's constitutionality.
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24-0245·Mandamus
- Defense counsel was properly disqualified because his firm never instructed a legal assistant, who had earlier worked on the same case for plaintiffs' former counsel, to stay off the matter; the employee must be admonished before working on a later-arising conflict, whether or not she was "switching sides" when hired.
- The e-filing notifications naming the legal assistant did not conclusively establish that plaintiffs waived their right to seek disqualification, so the Court denied mandamus.
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24-0250·Petition For Review
- The Texas Citizens Participation Act applies to the Lilith Fund's declaratory-judgment suit because it was "based on or in response to" Sadie Weldon's Rule 202 petition to depose the Fund's deputy director about possible Heartbeat Act violations.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and remanded so it can decide the remaining steps of the TCPA analysis.
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24-0255·Other
- A trial court abuses its discretion by striking a party's pleadings as a discovery sanction where the record lacks evidence of flagrant or extreme bad faith, there is no direct relationship between the conduct and the sanction, the sanction is excessive, and the court did not first consider or test lesser sanctions.
- The Court independently reviews the whole record rather than deferring to lengthy findings of fact drafted by the sanctions movant, and the movant bears the burden to prove that a party failed to produce documents within its possession, custody, or control.
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24-0258·Petition For Review
- Rule of Civil Procedure 166a(i) requires a nonmovant to "produce" summary-judgment evidence, not to "attach" it: a response to a no-evidence motion that discusses and points the trial court to evidence already in the record, even if not attached, produces that evidence, and the trial court abuses its discretion by refusing to consider it.
- Evidence that a party first attached to its own pleading (here, the State's supporting officer affidavit filed with its forfeiture notice) is not disqualified from use on summary judgment merely for that reason, and the State's response summarizing the affidavit sufficiently pointed it out.
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24-0267·Petition For Review
- An order directing the clerk to "remove this cause from the Court's docket" and notifying the parties "this cause is hereby dismissed" is not a final judgment where it lacks other indicia of finality and does not dispose of pending counter-claims and sanctions motions, so the trial court kept plenary power to enter a sanctions order.
- The Court dismissed the appeal from the sanctions order for want of a final judgment, reversed the court of appeals' judgment vacating that order, and remanded to the trial court.
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24-0271·Petition For Review
- The Court denied review in a private-transfer-fee dispute, but Justice Young wrote that when a trial court must consider pleading exhibits in ruling on a Rule 91a motion, which depends on whether they constitute "in whole or in part, the claim sued on" under Rule 59, is an important question the Court will likely need to resolve in a future case.
- He doubted the court of appeals' approach of ignoring the transfer-fee notices the plaintiff itself attached, but concurred in the denial because two other independent grounds also supported the judgment and one needs more percolation in the lower courts.
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24-0286·Petition For Review
- A plaintiff whose claims against an architect were dismissed without prejudice for lacking a certificate of merit may reassert them by amended petition in the same lawsuit, with a certificate, rather than only by filing a new suit.
- A dismissal without prejudice puts the parties back where they were before suit, so the claims may be reasserted under the ordinary rules; whether the amended petition relates back is left to the trial court.
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24-0290·Mandamus
- A trial court abused its discretion by granting a new trial after a verdict for the defendants because none of its stated reasons held up: defense counsel's harsh "lawyer-driven plan" closing was curable, not incurable, and the plaintiffs never sought a ruling, retraction or instruction and instead reserved the complaint for a new-trial motion.
- The other stated reasons also failed: the evidence that the employer's lawyer referred the plaintiffs to their doctors came in without objection and was cumulative, and the finding of "manifestly low damages" as to the driver was unexplained, so the order must be redrafted as to her, while judgment on the verdict must be rendered for SpaceX.
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24-0293·Mandamus
- Does the $25 million cap on supersedeas security in Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 52.006(b)(2) apply per judgment debtor or to all bonds posted on a multi-debtor judgment, so that a single $25 million joint bond can suspend a $360 million judgment against three jointly liable defendants?
- May a trial court, after its plenary power expires, declare a supersedeas bond invalid immediately upon finding it insufficient, or must it give the debtor a reasonable time to post a sufficient bond?
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24-0315·Petition For Review
- A trial court abused its discretion by admitting a former family-court judge's expert testimony that the parties were informally married, because the informal-marriage elements are within ordinary jurors' understanding, so the testimony did not help the jury under Rule of Evidence 702, and it improperly opined on a legal presumption and said how she would rule as judge.
- The error was harmful because the testimony was crucial to the only contested issue on conflicting evidence, was not cumulative, was deliberately offered and was emphasized, so the Court reversed and remanded for a new trial; it did not hold that former judges may never testify as experts.
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24-0368·Certified Question
- A person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication may be liable for defamation if the person intends or knows that it will be published.
- A defamation plaintiff can survive summary judgment without identifying the specific statements the defendant made in supplying the material if direct or circumstantial evidence is legally sufficient to show the defendant was the source of the identified defamatory statements.
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24-0411·Petition For Review
- The Court denied Howmet's petition, but Justice Young (joined by Justices Sullivan and Hawkins) wrote that the Court will need to decide whether proof of dose is required in single-source asbestos cases, as Bostic v. Georgia-Pacific said, and criticized the court of appeals for dismissing Bostic's statement as "nonbinding obiter dicta."
- He concurred in the denial because this petition would not let the Court reach the issue: the court of appeals also held the plaintiffs' proof of dose was sufficient, and Howmet's petition focuses on a different question.
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24-0424·Mandamus
- Winter Storm Uri plaintiffs' allegations that transmission and distribution utilities failed to prevent or mitigate the storm's freezing temperatures cannot support intentional nuisance, because the utilities were not the source of the alleged nuisance, and those claims must be dismissed with prejudice.
- The plaintiffs' pleadings do not sufficiently allege gross negligence because they do not allege conscious indifference in light of the utilities' legal obligation to follow ERCOT load-shed orders and guidelines, but the plaintiffs must be given a chance to replead that claim.
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24-0438·Petition For Review
- A Texas court with personal jurisdiction over the parties can order defendants to convey out-of-state mineral rights under their contract; it does not lack subject-matter jurisdiction just because ownership of foreign real estate is at issue.
- The suit sought an in personam judgment binding only the parties, not an in rem judgment fixing title against the world, so the Court reversed and remanded for the issues the court of appeals did not reach.
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24-0494·Mandamus
- Whether a nursing home's one-sentence original answer invoking the Pandemic Liability Protection Act defense (Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 74.155) gave the "specific facts" section 74.155(g) requires within its deadline, or only fair notice of the defense.
- Whether section 74.155(g)'s deadline is mandatory, so that missing it forfeits the defense and restores the ordinary negligence standard of proof, or merely directory.
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24-0516·Petition For Review
- An appellate court must address issues that, if meritorious, would require rendition of judgment before remanding for a new trial based on jury-charge error; skipping them was reversible error.
- The court of appeals' harm analysis of a spoliation instruction was also too underdeveloped to justify discarding the verdict, so the Court reversed and remanded to that court.
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24-0543·Petition For Review
- Once a trial court order contains unequivocal finality language, a later order can't undo that finality by implication—it must expressly and specifically say it's vacating, modifying, or altering the earlier order's disposition.
- There's no stand-alone right to an injunction abating a nuisance: an injunction, like damages, requires an underlying cause of action, so the same two-year statute of limitations that bars a claim for damages bars a request for injunctive relief based on the same claim.
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24-0581·Petition For Review
- A no-answer default judgment against an Alabama LLC was reversed on restricted appeal because the record did not show process was forwarded to the statutorily required address, the most recent address on file with the Secretary of State; the lower courts wrongly presumed it was.
- The Court vacated the default judgment and remanded, with five Justices joining Chief Justice Blacklock's concurrence.
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24-0778·Petition For Review
- A probate order admitting a will and denying a competing application for letters is not a final, appealable judgment on a son's pending will-contest objections when the order expressly declined to rule on them and the record shows it was not meant to dispose of them.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals' dismissal for lack of jurisdiction and remanded for the merits.
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24-0786·Mandamus
- Whether a trial court abuses its discretion by signing a scheduling order that declares a defendant's deadlines to amend pleadings and designate experts had already "PASSED" when, absent a signed discovery control plan, the rules' default Level 2 deadlines were still months away.
- Whether the trial court then abused its discretion by striking the defendant's amended answer and refusing leave to file a counteraffidavit and designate experts, leaving the defendant without an adequate remedy by appeal.
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24-0802·Petition For Review
- A private government contractor is not a "governmental unit" under Section 51.014(a)(8) merely because its plea invokes the State's immunity, so the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction over Conduent's interlocutory appeal.
- Section 51.014(a)(5) does not help: it covers immunity asserted by an "individual" officer or employee, and a company is not an individual.
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24-0825·Petition For Review
- What is the scope of a directed verdict on liability in a breach-of-contract case when the trial court does not say which of two termination-fee provisions was breached: only the ground stated in the motion under Rule 268, or the whole record?
- Does the timing of the client's termination, which decides whether a $40,000-capped fee or a percentage-of-savings fee applies, go to liability or only to the amount of damages?
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24-0828·Other
- The Court denied a petition for review in a fight over control of the Sikh National Center's board and bank accounts that raised whether a trial court that lacks subject-matter jurisdiction under the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine may still award attorney's fees under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act, and Justice Young concurred in the denial.
- The concurrence tentatively viewed a court wholly lacking jurisdiction over a UDJA claim as unable to award fees on that claim, though fees may be available for litigating the jurisdictional question itself, but said the case was a poor vehicle because the trial court's rulings were unclear and the parties changed their jurisdictional positions.
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24-0833·Petition For Review
- The Court denied the City of Houston's petition for review in a Tort Claims Act suit, and Justice Young, joined by Justice Devine, concurred to flag a split between the First and Fourteenth Courts of Appeals on whether a superseded admission is summary-judgment evidence that can create a fact issue.
- The concurrence doubted that amending an admission creates a genuine dispute of material fact and said the Court will need to resolve the question, but this case was not a good vehicle because the City objected to the superseded admissions only on timeliness grounds.
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24-0834·Petition For Review
- The Peeler doctrine bars an unexonerated criminal defendant's legal-malpractice claim against his defense counsel, but it doesn't categorically bar every other claim he might bring against that same counsel—claims genuinely independent of the conviction (like fees that were excessive, unearned, or fraudulently procured) still need their own causation and anti-fracturing analysis.
- A parent who wasn't her child's attorney's client can still have standing to sue for her own direct economic losses if she personally paid the attorney for specific services he promised but didn't provide.
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24-0840·Petition For Review
- In a parental-termination case, a court may not terminate parental rights when someone speaking for the Department of Family and Protective Services, including its designated representative, has unequivocally said the Department is not seeking termination and the Department never repudiated that statement, even if its live pleading still requested termination.
- The Court rendered judgment appointing the mother parent non-conservator, the relief the designated representative said the Department sought, and remanded for the trial court to render a judgment consistent with that decision.
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24-0879·Mandamus
- A trial court abused its discretion by ordering a new trial after an 11-1 defense verdict in a finger-amputation malpractice case, because its stated reasons misperceived the law of medical-negligence causation and it may have been influenced by a dissenting juror's improper letter about deliberations.
- The Court conditionally granted mandamus and directed the trial court to render judgment on the verdict.
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24-0883·Mandamus
- The federal General Aviation Revitalization Act barred a wrongful-death suit over a 1997 helicopter that crashed twenty years later, because its 18-year repose clock restarts only when a "new" part alleged to have caused the accident is added or replaced.
- Revisions to the flight manual that never changed the alleged warning defect did not amount to a new part, so the Court conditionally granted mandamus.
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24-0892·Other
- The trial court erred in ruling that PFLAG need not comply with the Attorney General's civil investigative demand under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act; the Court reversed and remanded.
- The AG suspects providers misrepresented services to insurers, and a CID may seek any "documentary material which would be discoverable under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure."
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24-0910·Petition For Review
- In a divorce case, husband's unrebutted, clear-and-convincing evidence, including expert tracing of two premarital investment accounts, established they were his separate property, and the court of appeals had no lawful basis to reject it a second time.
- The Court reversed and rendered judgment for the husband in a per curiam opinion without argument.
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24-0918·Petition For Review
- The Court granted the petition for review in a sexually-violent-predator civil commitment, vacated the judgments of the court of appeals and trial court, and dismissed the case as moot on Lonnie Encalade's own motion, without reaching the merits.
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24-0919·Other
- A wife who was unaware that alternative service had been posted on her parents' door and never received the citation satisfied the first Craddock element, because not receiving the citation and being unaware of its service is an excuse that, if true and uncontroverted, negates intentional or consciously indifferent failure to answer, even if she knew a divorce suit was pending.
- She also set up a meritorious defense and showed a new trial would not cause undue delay or injury, so she was entitled to a new trial in the default divorce; alternative service proves how and when service was made but is no evidence of when the defendant received actual notice.
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24-0924·Petition For Review
- A fraud claim against a company performing a regional transit authority's function was properly dismissed under Rule 91a because Texas law allows damages against such a contractor "only to the extent that" the authority would be liable, and DART could not be liable for the claim.
- The Court reinstated the dismissal of the fraud claim and remanded the rest of the case; it also cautioned about reviewing Rule 91a dismissals when key documents are missing from the record.
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24-0954·Petition For Review
- The Court granted the petition, vacated the trial court's and court of appeals' judgments, and remanded for rendition of judgment under the parties' settlement without reaching the merits, but denied the request to vacate the court of appeals' opinion.
- The petition presented whether a threshold expert report that failed to address causation can be a good-faith effort under Civil Practice and Remedies Code chapter 128, which governs claims against shooting ranges.
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24-0958·Petition For Review
- Does the Water Code or the Administrative Procedure Act set the deadline for suing over a groundwater district's permitting decision?
- Did the court of appeals even have jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal in the first place?
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24-1001·Other
- The Court denied two petitions for review in a health care liability case in which the court of appeals held a plaintiff's incomplete pre-suit medical authorization still tolled limitations for 75 days, and Justice Boyd noted his dissent from the denial without a written opinion.
- The petitions asked the Court to clarify Hampton v. Thome's exceptions for authorizations so deficient or bad-faith that they count as no authorization, in a case where the plaintiff listed only her OB/GYN and omitted the bariatric-surgery providers.
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24-1009·Petition For Review
- An estate's executor who is also its sole beneficiary may represent the estate pro se, because she is for all intents and purposes asserting only her own rights and no other beneficiary is harmed if she proceeds without a lawyer.
- The court of appeals therefore erred in dismissing the executor's appeal for want of prosecution after she failed to hire counsel; the Court reserved whether an executor of a single-beneficiary estate with creditors may proceed pro se, and the general rule for estates with other beneficiaries.
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24-1010·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus to E. Pierce Marshall, Jr., who sought pretrial relief on attorney immunity after the trial court denied summary judgment in a family trust dispute involving billions of dollars, and Justices Young and Sullivan dissented from the denial.
- The dissent said the Court should have taken the case to decide whether attorney immunity protects against suit and not merely liability, so that a trial court's refusal to apply it can be reviewed by mandamus before trial.
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24-1039·Petition For Review
- A court of appeals erred by ruling sua sponte that a guarantors' summary-judgment challenges were not preserved because certain evidence was missing from the appellate record, when both sides agreed the documents were on file for the trial court, since Rule 166a requires evidence to be on file at the hearing, not physically attached to the motion.
- Where a court of appeals is unsure whether documents attached to another pleading apply to the motion under review, it should ask the parties to clarify or consider the on-file evidence and reach the merits rather than find a procedural default that no party urged; the case is remanded to decide the unaddressed issues.
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24-1042·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus relief on whether a civil defendant is entitled to a stay while a parallel criminal case against him is pending, but two Justices wrote separately to propose (without adopting) a presumptive standard: courts should grant such a stay unless the opposing party shows a compelling reason to proceed or agrees to a no-adverse-inference jury instruction.
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24-1047·Petition For Review
- A court of appeals should not summarily dismiss an appeal because the appellant supposedly waived appellate rights in a settlement agreement it claims is invalid; it must first ascertain the facts to determine whether its jurisdiction was terminated.
- The Court reversed the dismissal of 1 Coventry Court's appeal and remanded to the court of appeals.
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24-1049·Petition For Review
- A trial court abused its discretion by finding no good cause for an untimely expert designation where the defendant's original expert changed jobs, left the State, and refused to testify shortly before trial and the defendant promptly moved to substitute.
- Good cause is a demanding standard, not an impossible one; the Court reversed and remanded for a new trial.
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24-1060·Petition For Review
- A group of cities sued the wrong defendant when they challenged, as unconstitutional gifts, state statutes capping the fees they may charge telecommunications companies for use of public rights-of-way, so the courts never had jurisdiction.
- The Court vacated the trial court's and court of appeals' judgments (and the court of appeals' opinion) without reaching the Gift Clause question.
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24-1062·Mandamus
- A pending qui tam claim under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act survives the death of the private relator, because the claim is brought on behalf of the State.
- The suit was not barred by a separate pending qui tam action or a public-disclosure bar, and dominant jurisdiction did not require abatement, so the Court denied mandamus.
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24-1069·Petition For Review
- A patient's health care liability claims against her therapist were timely because the two-year limitations period can run from completion of treatment, and her therapy did not end until she was terminated as a patient, within two years of pre-suit notice (unanimous as to that holding).
- A four-justice plurality would also hold that "the occurrence of the . . . tort" means when the plaintiff was actually injured, not when the defendant's act happened, even though the Legislature removed the word "accrued" from the statute to abolish the discovery rule; the other Justices did not join that part.
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24-1073·Mandamus
- An interlocutory appeal of the denial of a Texas Citizens Participation Act motion to dismiss is not resolved, and the automatic stay of all trial court proceedings does not expire, until the court of appeals' mandate issues, not when its plenary power over its judgment expires.
- A trial court that awarded TCPA attorney's fees and disposed of all claims against a law firm before the mandate issued therefore acted without authority, so the Court conditionally granted mandamus and directed the trial court to vacate that order.
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24-1078·Petition For Review
- A trial court's refusal to rule on the State's plea to the jurisdiction is not an order that "grants or denies" the plea, so it cannot support an interlocutory appeal under Section 51.014(a)(8).
- Treating the petition as one for mandamus, the Court conditionally granted relief because the trial court may not decline to rule on a jurisdictional challenge to frustrate the State's appellate rights.
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25-0008·Petition For Review
- A trial court that intends to extend the automatic dismissal date in a parental-termination case but does not do so in writing or on the record before the date passes loses jurisdiction; the case is dismissed by operation of law.
- The Court vacated the judgments terminating the mother's rights in part and dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction over Justice Lehrmann's dissent.
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25-0057·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus to attorney Edwin K. Hunter, who sought pretrial relief on attorney immunity after the trial court denied him summary judgment on claims that he aided and abetted a breach of fiduciary duty by Elaine Marshall, and Justices Young and Sullivan dissented from the denial.
- The dissent called Hunter a clean vehicle to decide whether attorney immunity is immunity from suit and whether mandamus is available, because Preston Marshall lost the attorney-client relationship issue in a separate case that appears to have preclusive effect.
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25-0063·Petition For Review
- The Court granted the petition, vacated the trial court's orders and the court of appeals' judgment, and remanded for rendition of judgment under the parties' settlement without reaching the merits, but denied the parties' request to vacate the court of appeals' opinion.
- The petition argued that the appeal from a temporary injunction protecting pipelines was moot once construction ended and that the injunction was not vague or overbroad.
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25-0098·Other
- A divorce-case mandamus over whether the attorney-client privilege and work-product protection shield communications between Michael Conner Searcy's assistant and his lawyers was set for argument February 11, 2026, but the Court abated the case and canceled argument on February 3 under Rule 7.2(b); it lifted the abatement and reinstated the case on April 17.
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25-0149·Mandamus
- A Texas trial court abuses its discretion by referring a question to an administrative agency under the primary-jurisdiction doctrine unless the Legislature or Congress has clearly granted the agency jurisdiction to answer that specific question.
- Because no statute clearly empowered the Surface Transportation Board to decide whether a railroad is a "common carrier" under FELA, the Court conditionally granted mandamus and directed the trial court to vacate its referral order.
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25-0159·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus to companies that sought to remove a 2021 breach-of-contract suit from a Dallas County court at law to the Texas Business Court, and Justice Sullivan, joined by Justice Young, concurred, explaining that the Business Court Act applies only to civil actions commenced on or after September 1, 2024.
- The concurrence noted that House Bill 40 now lets a party seek transfer of a pre-September 2024 action to the Business Court by agreed motion and its permission, so the relators can try that route after September 1, 2025.
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25-0172·Petition For Review
- The Court granted the State of Texas's petition for review in its deceptive-trade-practices suit against Google and, on an agreed motion after settlement and without argument or considering the merits, vacated the court of appeals' judgment and remanded for rendition of judgment under the parties' settlement agreement; Justice Sullivan did not participate.
- The petition asked whether Google is subject to specific personal jurisdiction in Texas for allegedly deceptive collection of Texans' location and browsing data, and whether a court of appeals may limit its inquiry to the State's pleading when reviewing a special appearance.
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25-0175·Mandamus
- Whether a trial court that signed a final judgment containing finality language, and that lost plenary power thirty days later, may eight months afterward "reform" the judgment to cut an $81,977.19 attorney's-fee award to $2,076, or whether that order is void for want of jurisdiction.
- Whether the change was a substantive (judicial) modification rather than a correctable clerical error, and whether mandamus is the appropriate last remedy after the court of appeals denied relief.
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25-0267·Petition For Review
- Whether a court of appeals has jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a plea to the jurisdiction when the officials' plea challenged only official-capacity claims and the plaintiff had nonsuited those claims, leaving only individual-capacity claims.
- Whether a court of appeals may dismiss individual-capacity claims against county officials, including federal section 1983 claims, when the officials never moved for summary judgment or otherwise challenged those claims in the trial court.
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25-0303·Petition For Review
- Whether a court of appeals may decline to reach the merits of an appellant's challenges, including to a $10 million attorney's-fee award and a salary disgorgement award and to the fiduciary-duty and attorney-immunity rulings for a company's general counsel, by finding them inadequately briefed or waived, given this Court's directive that waiver be a last resort.
- Whether failing to request additional findings of fact under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 298 forfeits an appellant's right to challenge the legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence supporting express or deemed findings after a bench trial.
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25-0307·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus to grandparents who are nonparent joint managing conservators of their orphaned granddaughter and challenged temporary orders limiting their visitation to what the child agrees to, and Justice Young, joined by Justices Lehrmann and Busby, concurred in the denial.
- The concurrence found the grandparents' argument plausible that the order is an insurmountable hurdle because they have no way to contact the child, but denied relief because the final trial was set for September 23, 2025, and urged courts to review such conditions speedily in future cases.
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25-0317·Mandamus
- Texas law imposes no duty of care on a passive shipper of goods to prevent the negligence of an independent, federally regulated motor carrier, so a wrongful-death claim against Home Depot for negligently selecting a trucking company failed as a matter of law.
- The Court conditionally granted mandamus directing the trial court to dismiss the claims against Home Depot under Rule 91a.
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25-0338·Petition For Review
- Must a defendant seeking summary judgment on limitations in a latent-injury case show that a doctor told the plaintiffs of a "likely" causal link, or can a family's knowledge, medical notes and a class-action opt-out show the claim accrued more than two years before suit?
- Did the summary-judgment record as a whole establish that, more than two years before the family sued the NCAA over their father's CTE, a reasonable person would have linked his decline to college football?
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25-0340·Mandamus
- Did the trial court abuse its discretion by ordering defense counsel to pay $126,590.78 to fund the plaintiff's retrial as a sanction for mentioning "insurance" in violation of a limine order that was never entered?
- Do the law firms lack an adequate remedy by appeal from a pre-judgment sanction that has them fund litigation against their own client, and can a court use inherent power to shift fees?
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25-0386·Petition For Review
- A no-evidence summary-judgment motion adequately identifies the challenged element when it incorporates the plaintiff's own pleaded theory, even without reciting the element by its formal legal label.
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25-0421·Mandamus
- Did the trial court abuse its discretion under Rule 196.7 by ordering a multi-hour inspection, with video, photographs and audio, of a neighbor's fourteen-acre homestead in a deed-restriction suit when the plaintiffs offered no evidence of need and could get the information from less intrusive sources?
- Does Bosco lack an adequate remedy by appeal from an inspection order that cannot be undone after the neighbors and their attorney have entered and filmed her property?
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25-0433·Mandamus
- Whether a trial court abused its discretion by ordering a party either to produce its contracts and communications with nonparty customers within seven days or be barred from offering evidence on that subject at trial, relief the opposing party did not seek until a de novo appeal from an associate judge's order and which was entered without findings.
- Whether the trial court could overrule a party's privilege objections to its communications with its former parent company's lawyers before the party made a withholding statement under Rule 193.3, whether parent and subsidiary communications can be privileged, and whether the relator lacks an adequate remedy by appeal.
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25-0463·Mandamus
- Whether Government Code § 154.101(f), as amended in 2023, bars anyone but a certified shorthand reporter from preparing a written transcript of a deposition, or whether Rules 199.1(c) and 203.6(a) let a party use a transcription made from a non-stenographic (Skribe) recording.
- Whether the trial court clearly abused its discretion by striking that transcript and quashing further non-stenographic depositions, and whether mandamus lies given the video, remaining discovery time and the option of a certified-reporter transcript.
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25-0534·Petition For Review
- Whether the Texas Citizens Participation Act's bodily-injury exemption, which covers "a legal action seeking recovery for bodily injury, wrongful death, or survival" and "statements made regarding that legal action," applies to a fee-sharing dispute between two law firms arising from earlier bodily-injury litigation, or only to statements about the nonmovant's own pending bodily-injury action.
- Whether courts must ordinarily decide first, under the TCPA's burden-shifting structure, whether the movant has shown the Act applies before deciding whether an exemption does.
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25-0560·Petition For Review
- On a granted motion to dismiss, the Court granted the petition in the Endicott guardianship, vacated the Tenth Court of Appeals' judgment and opinion, and remanded to the trial court without reaching the merits, after a guardianship order that had been challenged for defective service and unmet statutory requirements was itself vacated.
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25-0588·Petition For Review
- A parent whose lawyer's ineffective assistance caused an untimely notice of appeal from a parental-termination judgment may pursue an out-of-time appeal, the Court held in a per curiam opinion.
- The court of appeals must abate the appeal and remand for a hearing on whether counsel was ineffective; three Justices dissented, arguing an untimely notice can never confer appellate jurisdiction.
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25-0603·Petition For Review
- Whether a court of appeals may reverse and remand for a new trial on a ground no party raised when the appellant asked only for rendition of judgment, or whether remand is precluded unless the appellant has disclaimed it, a point on which the courts of appeals are said to be split, and whether an en banc court that grants rehearing must decide all issues necessary to resolve the case.
- Whether the court of appeals erred in holding a confidential settlement agreement ambiguous based on its view of the equities, rather than enforcing an unambiguous contract as written under Equinor Energy LP v. Lindale Pipeline, LLC.
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25-0641·Mandamus
- A court of appeals abused its discretion by granting a Rule 29.3 stay that kept a temporary injunction against the Attorney General's new prosecutor-reporting rules in place for the named appellees without making a preliminary inquiry into the likely merits, which In re State requires before countermanding the State's automatic supersedeas.
- The Court conditionally granted mandamus and directed the court of appeals to evaluate the merits and decide by January 5, 2026 whether a Rule 29.3 stay is warranted, without preventing it from granting one under the proper standard.
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25-0648·Petition For Review
- Whether timely service of process on a governmental employee excuses a Tort Claims Act plaintiff from timely serving the employer when she sued both from the start, and whether University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio v. Bailey applies when the employer, rather than the employee, moved to dismiss the employee under section 101.106(e).
- Whether the plaintiff exercised diligence in serving the employee, whom she sued at the end of limitations in 2016 but did not serve until 2018, so that her claims were timely regardless of how the first question is answered.
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25-0655·Mandamus
- Whether, in a personal-injury case, defendants may discover what a treating physician charges for the same services under attorney letters of protection versus negotiated rates with insurers and public payors, as In re K&L Auto Crushers, LLC suggests, and whether the trial court abused its discretion by quashing that discovery from the physician and a related entity.
- Whether the requested discovery is relevant even though the plaintiffs de-designated the physician as an expert on the reasonableness of medical costs, or instead invites collateral mini-trials about insurance that are prejudicial and disproportionate, and whether the defendants lack an adequate remedy by appeal.
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25-0660·Petition For Review
- Whether a party preserves a complaint about the trial court's failure to submit its tendered questions and instructions by tendering them and having the trial court mark them "Refused" and say error is preserved, or must it also object at the charge conference, and whether objecting to a legally invalid damages theory preserves error or the party must also object that the broad-form question improperly mixed damages.
- Whether legally sufficient evidence supports a $5 million damages award that petitioner says rests on an unenforceable agreement to negotiate, consequential damages the contract forecloses, hypothetical-bargain lost profits, and causation without expert testimony.
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25-0663·Mandamus
- Did a probate court abuse its discretion by sua sponte ordering that a private forensic examiner search the State's confidential abuse-and-neglect database for records the Department of Family and Protective Services says were purged, without the analysis In re Weekley Homes requires?
- Does Human Resources Code § 48.101 let a judge delegate in camera review of confidential investigatory records, and does the Department lack an adequate remedy by appeal?
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25-0678·Petition For Review
- Whether expert medical testimony is required to prove that a defendant transmitted a sexually transmitted disease to the plaintiff, or whether the transmission of such diseases is within jurors' common knowledge so that lay testimony, including the defendant's own admission, can establish causation.
- Whether the court of appeals erred in reversing a jury verdict and rendering a take-nothing judgment for want of expert causation testimony, including where the plaintiff's own expert had been excluded at trial and she did not challenge that exclusion.
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25-0688·Petition For Review
- Justice Young (joined by Justices Devine and Sullivan) wrote that when the government treats termination as a "slam dunk" and fails to build a strong trial record, appellate courts cannot verify that termination was justified, as happened here: a 70-page transcript and thin exhibits led a fractured San Antonio court to reverse.
- He took no view on how the court of appeals should have decided the case, but urged the Department to present the evidence it has, including facts in its removal affidavit that were never put on at trial.
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25-0749·Mandamus
- In light of its May 15, 2026 decision in In re Home Depot, the Court denied Toro's mandamus petition without prejudice so the trial court and parties can revisit Toro's Rule 91a motion to dismiss a wrongful-death suit alleging negligent selection of a motor carrier.
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25-0759·Petition For Review
- Should the Court overrule In re City of Georgetown and hold attorney-client privilege isn't "other law" that overrides Public Information Act disclosure, or, if privilege still applies, narrow it so it doesn't shield a purely factual investigation with no legal advice?
- Did the district waive privilege when a senior official publicly disclosed the withheld report's conclusions?
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25-0762·Petition For Review
- Whether a plaintiff who timely sued a governmental employee within the two-year limitations period, but then missed Tort Claims Act section 101.106(f)'s 30-day window to substitute the employer after the employee moved to dismiss, may maintain her claim against the employer when she added it fifty-three days later and after limitations had run.
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25-0774·Petition For Review
- Whether a trial court's re-filing of a plaintiff's notice of nonsuit containing the language "This is final and disposes of all claims and actions made the basis of this lawsuit" as a signed order made a final judgment, so that the trial court lost plenary power and later could not enter a default judgment against the City and its police officer.
- Whether a Tort Claims Act plaintiff's petition affirmatively demonstrates subject-matter jurisdiction when it alleges jurisdictional facts in the alternative against two governmental units, pleads nothing about scope of employment, and does not negate the Act's emergency exception for police vehicles, and whether negligent entrustment is cognizable and a default judgment may be entered against both a governmental unit and its employee.
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25-0776·Mandamus
- Whether the trial court abused its discretion by entering a default judgment against the City of Houston and its police officer after its plenary power expired, because Guzman's notice of nonsuit, re-filed by the court as a signed order, had already disposed of all claims and actions.
- Alternatively, whether the court abused its discretion by failing to perform the ministerial act of entering a final judgment on that nonsuit, and whether the default judgment is void because Guzman did not plead facts affirmatively demonstrating the court's subject-matter jurisdiction.
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25-0806·Mandamus
- Whether a trial court abused its discretion by denying separate trials when a wrongful-death plaintiff joined negligence and gross negligence claims against a defendant with Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act claims against him, his wife, and entities they own, and whether the defendants lack an adequate remedy by appeal.
- Whether trying the two sets of claims together is unfairly prejudicial and inconvenient because it exposes the jury to the defendant's wealth and asset transfers, or whether that evidence bears on the reprehensibility of the conduct and on exemplary damages beyond the statutory cap.
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25-0812·Petition For Review
- A permissive interlocutory appeal satisfies Section 51.014(d)(1) when there is a substantial ground for concluding that a trial-court ruling is at odds with binding precedent.
- The Court reversed a court of appeals' refusal to accept Helena Chemical's appeal, which argued the Court's earlier Helena Chemical v. Cox decision made the farmers' expert testimony unreliable as a matter of law.
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25-0823·Petition For Review
- Whether a trial court's exclusion of a plaintiff's treating-chiropractor deposition testimony and all of her medical and billing records, enforcing a docket control order and Rule 193.6, was in substance a case-determinative discovery sanction that requires flagrant bad faith or callous disregard and consideration of lesser sanctions.
- Whether the court abused its discretion by strictly enforcing the docket control order's deadlines against the plaintiff while excusing the defendant's missed deadline, whether a provision freezing deadlines through any reset of the trial date conflicts with Rule 190.5(b), and whether "unfair surprise" under Rule 193.6(a)(2) can support exclusion when the opposing party already had the records.
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25-0865·Mandamus
- Did the trial court abuse its discretion by denying Ford's Rule 91a motion to dismiss a customer's contract, fraud, DTPA and assault claims, where Ford says it never dealt with him or repaired his vehicle and the Occupations Code bars it from selling repairs to consumers?
- Do the amended petition's allegations that Ford advertised its dealer network and told the dealership what repair to make state claims against Ford, or did Ford raise its merits arguments too late and too generally under Rule 91a?
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25-0880·Mandamus
- Can a third-party claimant sue an insurer and its claims administrator for tortious interference, invasion of privacy and conspiracy over negotiated reductions of her medical bills, before the at-fault driver's liability has been established?
- Should the trial court have dismissed those claims under Rule 91a because the claimant assigned away her interest, the no-direct-action rule and remoteness defeat justiciability, and the insurer was justified, and does mandamus lie to review the denial?
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25-0897·Petition For Review
- Whether an attorney's communications to a government agency reporting a client's allegation of fraud, made on the client's behalf, are an exercise of the right to petition or of free speech on a matter of public concern under the Texas Citizens Participation Act.
- Whether the court of appeals misapplied the TCPA's exclusion for private economic dealings, and whether the attorney established the affirmative defenses of attorney immunity and quasi-judicial immunity as a matter of law.
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25-0917·Petition For Review
- The Court denied review of the dismissal of a pro se widow's health care liability claim for missing the Medical Liability Act's 120-day expert-report deadline, but Justice Young (joined by Justices Devine and Busby) urged the Legislature to weigh access to justice, noting she served an expert report only about two months late.
- He identified why lawyers likely declined the case (state-hospital immunity, a COVID-19 gross-negligence standard, and a $250,000 damages cap) and hoped the Legislature would prefer merits decisions for good-faith litigants.
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25-0932·Mandamus
- Can a third-party claimant sue an insurer's claims administrator for tortious interference, invasion of privacy and conspiracy over negotiated reductions of her medical bills, before the at-fault driver's liability has been established?
- Should the trial court have dismissed those claims under Rule 91a because the claimant assigned away her interest, the no-direct-action rule and remoteness defeat justiciability, and the insurer was justified, and does mandamus lie to review the denial?
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25-0939·Petition For Review
- Whether Family Code section 151.001(a)(7), which gives a parent "the right to represent the child in legal action," allows a non-lawyer parent to file and prosecute a personal-injury suit on behalf of a minor child pro se, or whether doing so is the unauthorized practice of law under Government Code section 81.102.
- Whether Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 44 (next friend) authorizes a non-lawyer parent to appear pro se for the child, and whether the trial court properly struck the pleadings and dismissed the suit under Rule 12.
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25-0941·Petition For Review
- Justice Sullivan (joined by Justice Young) concurred in denying review but reminded trial courts that the 90-day deadline to finish a parental-termination trial, though not jurisdictional, is a duly enacted law they must follow.
- He criticized a Harris County court for starting trial with about three minutes of Zoom testimony to "check the box" and then stretching a four-hour, three-witness trial across five months without the written extension the statute allows.
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25-0948·Petition For Review
- Whether a woman's reports to the U.S. Small Business Administration that her then-husband obtained CARES Act emergency loans in her name through identity theft were an exercise of free speech on a matter of public concern or of the right to petition, so that the Texas Citizens Participation Act applies to his defamation suit against her.
- Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the trial court properly denied her TCPA motion to dismiss.
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25-0973·Petition For Review
- On the parties' joint motions, the Court granted review, vacated the Fifteenth Court of Appeals' judgment, and dismissed as moot a fight over whether a citizen-initiative intervenor could defend her city's voter-approved ordinance against a challenge by the Attorney General.
- The Court refused the petitioner's additional request to vacate the court of appeals' opinion, so that opinion remains on the books even though its judgment is vacated.
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25-0977·Mandamus
- The Court denied a grieving mother's pro se mandamus petition to correct the informant listed on her son's death certificate, but Justice Young (joined by Justices Devine and Busby) concurred to describe the "Kafkaesque" runaround she faced and to urge the Department of State Health Services and the courts to help her.
- The Department's response did not dispute her allegations but argued lack of standing and sovereign immunity, and outlined a path: get a court order in probate, justice, or district court, then file a VS-172 form with a certified copy.
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25-0983·Petition For Review
- Whether a trial court that held hearings on applications to compel arbitration and then issued a notice setting the case for a jury trial, without ruling expressly, implicitly denied the applications, so that the applicants have the statutory right to an interlocutory appeal, or merely deferred the ruling.
- If so, whether the underlying lawsuit must be sent back to arbitration because a valid agreement exists, the parties clearly delegated arbitrability to the arbitrator, and no legitimate challenge allows the court to decide it.
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25-0988·Petition For Review
- The Court sent this case back to the court of appeals to reconsider in light of a new U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Federal Arbitration Act's exemption for transportation workers, without deciding the question itself.
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25-0994·Petition For Review
- Whether a former employee who says she cannot recall or confirm signing an electronic arbitration agreement raises a genuine fact dispute over contract formation, requiring the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing before compelling arbitration, when the employer offered its CEO's declaration describing the security procedure for electronic signatures.
- Whether the court of appeals applied an unduly rigid reading of Aerotek, Inc. v. Boyd and Business and Commerce Code section 322.009(a) (the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) in holding the employer had to enumerate every security procedure attending the signing.
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25-0995·Petition For Review
- Did the court of appeals err in letting a former legislator's defamation claim survive a TCPA motion to dismiss over campaign signs calling him "convicted" and "dishonorably discharged," including by finding actual malice from a cease-and-desist letter and a refusal to retract?
- Did he fail to present clear and specific evidence on the statements he pleaded, and do substantial truth, the libel-proof doctrine, the Defamation Mitigation Act, and Section 230 bar his claims?
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25-0997·Petition For Review
- Whether, in a Texas Tort Claims Act suit over a collision with a police vehicle, the plaintiff must plead facts negating the emergency exception to the Act's immunity waiver once the City invokes the exception in its answer, and when the exception is "plausibly implicated" so that the plaintiff bears that burden at the Rule 91a stage.
- Whether a plaintiff's conclusory allegation that the City "had timely notice of claim that it was responsible for damages arising out of the subject collision" satisfies the Act's notice requirement, and whether the City can obtain dismissal under Rule 91a on official-immunity grounds.
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25-1028·Petition For Review
- Whether a health care liability plaintiff's expert report, which names the defendant surgeon only once as the person who performed the C-section and otherwise faults "a reasonable institution" and the hospital's employees for a retained surgical sponge, adequately implicates that surgeon's conduct when read as a whole, or is "no report" as to him.
- If the report is deficient, whether it was nonetheless a good-faith effort entitling the plaintiff to a chance to amend, and whether the surgeon's months-long delay in objecting forfeited a sufficiency challenge under the 21-day deadline.
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25-1030·Mandamus
- Whether the Fifteenth Court of Appeals abused its discretion by denying Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 29.3 relief, which would have kept in place a temporary injunction against the State's award of more than $100 billion in Medicaid and CHIP managed-care contracts, on the sole ground that a standstill agreement meant the health plans faced no irreparable harm.
- Whether the State's automatic supersedeas on appeal and the merits of the plans' ultra vires claims (sovereign immunity, exhaustion of the bid-protest process, ripeness, standing) justify denying that temporary relief, and whether a court of appeals may issue a writ of injunction to protect its own jurisdiction without a showing of irreparable harm to the parties.
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25-1045·Petition For Review
- Under Government Code section 2253.078(a), does a public work contract terminate, and the one-year limitations period on a performance-bond claim begin, when the owner terminates the contractor's right to proceed and demands performance from the surety?
- Or does the contract, which the court of appeals held includes the bond, survive until the surety's own conduct under the bond ends, so that a suit filed 14 months after the county's termination notice is timely?
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25-1068·Petition For Review
- Whether a court of appeals that reverses a default judgment against some co-defendants for defective service must reverse it as to every defendant (including one that was properly served), or may affirm in part under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 44.1(b) where the judgment is separable.
- Whether a limited liability company "appears," and so is entitled to notice of the default-judgment hearing, when its non-lawyer member attends a hearing and acts for it with the trial court's apparent acquiescence.
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25-1078·Petition For Review
- Whether a trial court, after its plenary power has expired, may use a judgment nunc pro tunc to impose new joint-and-several attorney's fees, costs and a future enforcement fee on a defendant against whom the original judgment awarded no money, so that the nunc pro tunc is void as correcting judicial rather than clerical error.
- Whether a party collaterally attacking a judgment as void must offer evidence beyond the face of the two judgments, or whether the court of appeals imposed the wrong burden by faulting the petitioners for introducing only a partial copy of the original judgment.
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25-1086·Petition For Review
- Does the ecclesiastical-abstention doctrine bar a civil court from deciding a breach-of-contract suit that seeks the pension, insurance and administrative payments the United Methodist Book of Discipline requires of churches that disaffiliate, or can it be decided under neutral principles of law?
- Alternatively, may a civil court enforce the decision of a superior church body, the Conference, that the disaffiliating churches owe those payments?
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25-1108·Petition For Review
- Does civil barratry under Government Code section 82.0651 turn on what the soliciting lawyer or advertiser knew or should have known about the audience's need for legal services, or on whether the people addressed actually had an existing or imminent legal need?
- Does a safety training that precedes a legal-services sales pitch count as a "particular occurrence or event" under Penal Code section 38.01, and do attendees with no shown need for the services have standing to recover statutory damages?
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25-1116·Mandamus
- Is a brother whose only stake in his sister's separate trusts is a default remainder that arises if she dies without descendants and without an effective appointment a "beneficiary" or "interested person" with a right to a court-ordered accounting under Texas Property Code section 113.151?
- Can a trustee obtain mandamus against an accounting order on the ground that the compelled preparation and disclosure of trust information cannot be undone on appeal, or is an ordinary appeal after final judgment an adequate remedy?
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25-1123·Petition For Review
- After a parent's rights are terminated, may he still challenge on appeal the trial court's separate decision not to place the children with relatives vetted by the Department, or does he lose standing as a former parent once the termination is affirmed?
- Is the evidence legally sufficient to support the finding that terminating the mother's rights is in the children's best interest where she completed parts of a service plan and offered genetic explanations for the children's condition?
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26-0005·Petition For Review
- A trial court's own acknowledgment that a statute has more than one plausible reading which this Court hasn't yet resolved is, by itself, enough to show "a substantial ground for difference of opinion" supporting a permissive interlocutory appeal.
- A court of appeals shouldn't withhold permissive appeal just because only one existing court of appeals decision has addressed the question and no square conflict yet exists.
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26-0023·Mandamus
- Whether a property owner owes a duty to protect patrons from a mass shooter when the pleadings allege no similar crime at or near the property, under the Timberwalk factors and UDR Texas Properties, L.P. v. Petrie.
- Whether mandamus can enforce a Rule 91a dismissal of the negligence, negligent-undertaking and exemplary-damages claims, or whether foreseeability and reasonableness are fact questions requiring discovery.
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26-0107·Mandamus
- Must trial-court proceedings be stayed automatically while an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a motion to compel arbitration is pending, as Coinbase v. Bielski requires in federal court, or may a Texas court of appeals deny a stay in its discretion?
- If the court of appeals had discretion, did it abuse it by denying the stay, and does the "frivolous appeal" exception to the federal stay rule apply through Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 51.016?
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26-0152·Mandamus
- Does attorney immunity bar claims by a co-subject of a criminal investigation against the lawyers of another subject who allegedly misused information shared under an oral joint defense agreement, or were the two sides not sufficiently adverse for immunity to apply?
- Does entering a joint defense agreement create a fiduciary duty to the other parties that attorney immunity cannot defeat, and can the lawyers get mandamus from the denial of a Rule 91a motion to dismiss?
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26-0171·Mandamus
- Did the Fifteenth Court of Appeals clearly abuse its discretion in refusing temporary relief under Rule 29.3 against Harris County's immigrant legal services fund and hotline, which the State says violate the Gift Clauses because the County cannot ensure its funds serve a predominant public purpose?
- Is the County's program, which pays private providers for representing low-income residents in deportation proceedings, a public benefit under the Gift Clause test, and does the State face irreparable harm or an adequate remedy through its pending appeal?
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26-0206·Mandamus
- Justice Young dissented from the denial of mandamus to three construction companies whose request under Rule 190.5(b) to reopen discovery on an alleged design change was refused by the trial court on the eve of trial, saying denial was premature and the trial should have been stayed.
- The Court had asked for a response but trial was set to begin before it was due, and the response to the stay motion offered only a conclusory defense of the discovery ruling.
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26-0231·Petition For Review
- The parties settled their health care liability dispute after the court of appeals ruled, and jointly asked the Supreme Court to implement that settlement under Rule 56.3 rather than review the merits.
- The Court granted the agreed petition, vacated the judgments below, and remanded to the trial court to enter judgment on the parties' agreement—the case is now over in this Court.
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26-0242·Mandamus
- May a trial court enforce an arbitrator's subpoena to a settled non-party for more than 40 years of financial, entity and tax records without a proportionality, relevance and undue-burden analysis and without protecting the non-party from undue expense?
- Does the parties' earlier settlement and release of accounting and records claims bar the discovery, or is it ordinary trust-related discovery that a beneficiary and current trustee is entitled to for her malpractice claim?
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26-0295·Mandamus
- Did the trial court abuse its discretion by compelling a trucking company to produce the hiring, training and evaluation records of two supervisors of its driver in a collision case, where the company has stipulated the driver was in the course and scope of employment?
- Does a pleaded gross-negligence claim about training and supervision make those supervisors' personnel files discoverable, or is the request a fishing expedition for "other acts" evidence for which mandamus lies?
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26-0307·Petition For Review
- Must a plaintiff suing a licensed engineer allege in the same petition that time constraints prevented filing a certificate of merit before the 30-day extension in Section 150.002(c) applies?
- Was the Fourteenth Court of Appeals wrong to follow precedent that conflicts with Crosstex Energy Services v. Pro Plus and with the Beaumont and Dallas courts?
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26-0353·Petition For Review
- Whether summary-judgment orders that grant a party's motions but contain no decretal language (no express dismissal or "ordered, adjudged and decreed" language) are ineffective to adjudicate the claims, so that a later final judgment's Mother Hubbard clause disposes of those claims.
- Whether the appellant forfeited its merits challenge by not objecting in the trial court to the final judgment and its Mother Hubbard clause, given a trial-court record showing that the court and both parties understood the claims had been dismissed.
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26-0373·Mandamus
- Can a district court nullify a court of appeals' final mandate ordering disclosure of grand-juror names under the Public Information Act by ordering the district attorney to return the records to the court and sealing them as judicial "personnel information"?
- Does this Court's mandamus jurisdiction reach a district attorney directly, or only the district judge, and is mandamus appropriate given the competing interest in grand-juror privacy?
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26-0384·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus relief from a trial court order that used a Rule 592 "writ of attachment" to have a deponent taken into custody; Justice Hawkins, joined by Justice Young and Justice Sullivan, concurred in the denial.
- Justice Hawkins wrote that Rule 592 likely authorizes attachment of property, not arrest of a person, and that the Court should intervene if the practice recurs, but that the mislabeling dispute, expired writ, and nonsuit made this a poor vehicle.
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26-0467·Mandamus
- May a qui tam relator sue under the Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act when it is undisputed that the relator itself suffered no injury, or does it lack constitutional standing, and can it rely on the State's injury as an assignee?
- Does the Act's qui tam provision, which lets a private party proceed for the State without the State's participation, violate the separation of powers, and is mandamus an available remedy or is an appeal after final judgment adequate?
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26-0763·Mandamus
- In 2021 the Legislature extended Texas Labor Code Chapter 21's sexual-harassment protections to employees of businesses with fewer than fifteen workers. Did it also, without saying so, make a manager, or supervisor personally liable as an "employer" under section 21.141(1)(B), a person who "acts directly in the interests of an employer in relation to an employee"?
- Whether mandamus is available to review the denial of a Rule 91a motion to dismiss the individual-liability claim, or whether an ordinary appeal after final judgment is an adequate remedy.
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