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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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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23-0493·Other
- A trucker who drove below the speed limit in his own lane of a divided interstate in freezing rain was not, as a matter of law, a proximate cause of a collision when a pickup lost control, crossed a 42-foot median and struck his 18-wheeler within about two seconds, because his speed at most created the condition that made the harm possible and was not a substantial factor.
- Because every theory against the trucking company depended on the driver's negligence being a proximate cause, negligent training, supervision and "direct" liability claims fail with it, and the Court rendered judgment for the defendants without reaching the admission rule, the charge or apportionment.
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23-0607·Other
- A nonprofit health organization certified under Occupations Code chapter 162 may be vicariously liable for its employee physician's negligence, but the statute barring it from interfering with a physician's professional judgment narrows that liability: it cannot be held liable if exercising its right of control over the alleged negligence would interfere with the physician's independent medical judgment.
- Because the organization moved for summary judgment on purely legal grounds and did not conclusively show such interference, the trial court properly denied its motion, and the organization may file a new motion under the Court's standard.
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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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23-0950·Petition For Review
- Justice Young, joined by Justice Sullivan, concurred in the denial of a petition challenging an award of lifetime income benefits, writing that the case is not a good vehicle to decide whether courts must keep applying Travelers Insurance v. Seabolt's 1962 "total loss of use" test or the plain text of Labor Code section 408.161.
- He noted that a newer statute supersedes case law construing an older one, so a future case in which the choice between Seabolt and the current statute decides the outcome could warrant review.
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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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23-1039·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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24-0616·Certified Question
- Answering a Fifth Circuit certified question, the Court held that Labor Code chapter 21 (the Texas employment-discrimination statute) does not abrogate a plaintiff-employee's common-law defamation and fraud claims against another employee, even when they are based on the same course of conduct as discrimination and retaliation claims against the employer, because there is no clear repugnance between them.
- Waffle House's rule that chapter 21 is the exclusive remedy against an employer when the gravamen is covered discrimination stands; a plaintiff still cannot obtain a double recovery, and if her only substantive claim is discrimination or retaliation, chapter 21 remains exclusive.
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24-0823·Other
- The Court denied Jamie Cruse Vrinios's petition for review on January 30, 2026, after granting rehearing, reinstating the petition and receiving merits briefs, in a dispute over whether a former Mary Kay National Sales Director forfeited her Family Security Program retirement benefits by sending a promotional email.
- The petition asked whether a forfeiture-for-competition clause may cancel vested retirement benefits based on post-retirement conduct when its language is at best ambiguous; the Court issued no opinion.
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24-0846·Petition For Review
- An independent contractor cannot invoke the "necessary-use exception" to premises liability for an open and obvious danger—resolving, as a new bright-line holding, a question the Court had previously only hinted at.
- A workplace fall from an unguarded roof edge sounds in premises liability, not negligent activity, because the injury stemmed from a failure to remedy a dangerous condition (nonfeasance), not from contemporaneous negligent conduct (malfeasance).
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24-0966·Petition For Review
- A former Texas Ranger's disability-discrimination claim against DPS failed as a matter of law: he was fired for threatening conduct at his daughter's school, and the holding turned on Section 21.105 of the Labor Code.
- The Court reversed in part and rendered judgment for DPS on the plea to the jurisdiction.
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24-1034·Petition For Review
- Did the court of appeals err by deciding the case on a settlement-credit argument Old Republic never presented to the trial court and first raised in its reply brief, and by reading a "settlement credit limitation" from Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 33.012(b) into the employer liability offset in Labor Code § 417.001(b)?
- Even if preserved, is Old Republic estopped or contractually barred from claiming a credit on the Georgia-Pacific settlement funds, and how should the carrier's subrogation lien be calculated when workers settled before a partial-responsibility verdict?
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25-0182·Petition For Review
- Do union electricians who are Corpus Christi ISD taxpayers have taxpayer standing to challenge the school board's prevailing-wage determination without identifying a specific, concrete expenditure of public funds on an illegal activity?
- If they do, did the school district's wage survey comply with the Prevailing Wages Act when it relied on a Texas A&M survey for Nueces County rather than only projects inside the district?
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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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25-0410·Petition For Review
- Does an umbrella policy's employer's-liability exclusion for bodily injury to an insured's employee bar coverage for a refinery owner sued by a contractor's injured workers because the owner was a statutory employer under the Labor Code?
- Do the workers' compensation and employee-injury exclusions both apply on these facts?
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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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25-0983·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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25-1072·Petition For Review
- Justice Lehrmann concurred in the denial of review of a retaliation suit by a charter-school employee fired after reporting her boss to CPS, giving no view on whether she was a "professional" under Family Code § 261.110, the question the court of appeals decided against her.
- She wrote separately to urge the Legislature to extend the retaliation protection to everyone required to report child abuse, not just "professionals," and left open whether the common-law Sabine Pilot exception could protect an employee fired for reporting abuse by her own supervisor.
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25-1073·Petition For Review
- Whether a mother's employment arbitration agreement, which covers claims "by or with respect to" her and her children and delegates arbitrability to the arbitrator, binds her unborn son's survival and wrongful-death claims, which his father and mother now assert, even though the child was never a signatory.
- Whether the court or the arbitrator decides arbitrability as to the non-signatory unborn child, and if the court, whether any recognized doctrine (parental authority, ratification, or direct-benefits estoppel) binds the child's claims to the agreement.
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25-1077·Petition For Review
- Whether a contract that restricts an at-will employee's ability to change employers is a "restraint of trade" subject to reasonableness review, even if it is not a formal noncompete.
- Whether an at-will employee's resignation can be a "breach" supporting damages, and whether a $20,000 reimbursement provision is enforceable without proof that it was a reasonable forecast of loss.
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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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