22-0186·Petition For Review
- The Tort Claims Act's emergency-vehicle exception does not always turn on recklessness: a court must first decide whether any law or ordinance applies to the emergency action and, if so, whether the officer complied with it, and only if none applies ask about recklessness.
- A separate provision, § 101.062, waives immunity for claims arising from responding to a 9-1-1 call only if the action violates an applicable statute or ordinance, and the court of appeals must consider it on remand.
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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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23-0493·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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23-0562·Petition For Review
- A city's immunity from a suit over a police dog bite is not waived where its K-9 officer is protected by official immunity, and the city carried its burden on the good-faith element with the officer's uncontroverted affidavit describing a dark, rapidly developing foot pursuit of multiple fleeing suspects.
- The court of appeals applied the wrong good-faith standard: the test is what a reasonably prudent officer could have believed, not what a reasonable person would have done, and evidence of mere negligence does not overcome it.
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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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23-0704·Petition For Review
- An off-duty police officer working private security is acting within the general scope of his governmental employment, and is entitled to dismissal under the Tort Claims Act's election-of-remedies provision (§ 101.106(f)), when he responds to a reasonable suspicion that a theft is occurring in his presence, because Texas law makes it his duty to prevent the crime.
- The Court adopted the public-safety officer's rule (the "firefighter's rule"): an actor who innocently or negligently creates a peril owes no duty to an on-duty public-safety officer injured by that same peril while engaged in emergency activities, though the rule does not shield more culpable conduct, independent tortious conduct, or a failure to warn of known hidden dangers after the officer arrives.
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23-0808·Other
- Homeowners whose houses flooded during Hurricane Harvey presented legally insufficient evidence that a neighboring pipe-fabrication plant's defective drainage design was a but-for cause of their flooding, because their expert admitted he had done no analysis of the specific homes or the area and did not exclude the storm itself.
- But-for causation is required under negligence, negligence per se under Water Code § 11.086, and negligent nuisance alike, and in a complex flooding case after a catastrophic rain proof of the defendant's negligence is not proof of causation and expert testimony is required.
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23-0848·Petition For Review
- Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 97.002, which extinguishes liability of a contractor that constructs or repairs a highway, road or street "for" TxDOT and complies with contract documents material to the defect, does not require contractual privity with TxDOT, and the court of appeals erred by engrafting one onto the text.
- The contractors conclusively established that they worked "for" TxDOT because TxDOT would bear responsibility for operating and maintaining the frontage roads they worked on, and that installing traffic signals is construction or repair of a "highway"; the remaining element, contract compliance, was remanded to the court of appeals.
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23-0858·Petition For Review
- A police officer who, while responding to an armed-robbery call, looked away to raise his radio volume and slid into an intersection on wet pavement after the light turned yellow, without speeding or activating a siren he had discretion to use, acted at most with a momentary lapse of judgment amounting to ordinary negligence, not the conscious indifference or reckless disregard that defeats the Tort Claims Act's emergency exception.
- The court of appeals erred by discarding City of San Antonio v. Maspero as fact-bound and by treating its own earlier en banc decision as law of the case after this Court's intervening decisions.
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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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23-0996·Petition For Review
- A franchisor owes no duty of care to a franchisee's customer for the franchisee's hiring of a massage therapist where the franchise agreement makes the franchisee solely responsible for employment decisions and customer safety, and the franchisor neither had the right of control nor actually controlled hiring; a general right to set operating standards is not enough.
- No evidence supported a negligent-undertaking finding, because all safety responsibilities were contractually assigned to the franchisee and asking others to reduce dangers is not an undertaking.
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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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24-0045·Petition For Review
- Chapter 41's cap on exemplary damages (two times economic damages) is measured by the economic damages attributable to each defendant, not the total awarded against all defendants.
- Where jointly owning plaintiffs receive a single economic-damages amount, the cap applies to each defendant based on that single amount, so the Court remanded to reallocate exemplary damages after the court of appeals cut the economic award to $175,000.
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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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24-0273·Petition For Review
- When an arbitration agreement's validity is undisputed and it clearly and unmistakably delegates questions of "scope, arbitrability, or validity" to the arbitrator, a party's argument that the agreement does not extend to a later visit to the same trampoline park is a challenge to scope, not to the agreement's existence, and it must be decided by the arbitrator.
- Courts decide whether an arbitration agreement exists, including when a later agreement supersedes it, but framing an applicability question as one of "existence" as to particular claims collapses the existence and scope inquiries, as the Court held in TotalEnergies.
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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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24-0310·Petition For Review
- A shopper who slips on a puddle must produce some evidence of how long the dangerous condition existed to raise a fact issue on the store's constructive notice; evidence of earlier roof leaks elsewhere in the store was not enough.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and reinstated summary judgment for H-E-B.
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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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24-0428·Petition For Review
- The Tort Claims Act's waiver of governmental immunity for injuries caused by a government employee's "wrongful act or omission or the negligence" covers negligence per se claims based on statutes, like emergency-vehicle traffic provisions, that merely define more precisely what conduct breaches the common-law duty of care; the Court disapproved a contrary line of cases.
- The Court vacated the part of the court of appeals' judgment on official immunity and the emergency and 9-1-1 exceptions and remanded for reconsideration in light of City of Houston v. Rodriguez, City of Austin v. Powell and City of Killeen v. Terry.
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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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24-0846·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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24-0864·Petition For Review
- A holiday-themed community footrace, a Turkey Trot 5K, is "recreation" under the Recreational Use Statute, so the City of San Antonio is not liable for a participant's ordinary-negligence claim over a tripping injury in a city park.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals, rendered judgment in part for the City, and remanded.
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24-0905·Petition For Review
- Whether a plaintiff who agreed to arbitrate "any dispute or claim" with a trampoline park, in a release that delegates arbitrability to the arbitrator, can avoid arbitration by also suing the park's nonsignatory affiliates and owners, or whether those nonsignatories can enforce the agreement as parties, third-party beneficiaries, or through intertwined-claims estoppel.
- Whether a minor's lawsuit disaffirms a parent-signed release and its arbitration clause, and whether the court of appeals could compel arbitration against the park on an incomplete mandamus record with no reporter's record.
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24-0916·Petition For Review
- The Court denied the City of Houston's petition for review in a car-crash suit over whether the city had "actual notice" of the claim under the Tort Claims Act, while Justice Young, joined by three colleagues, wrote separately to say the Court should be willing in an appropriate case to reconsider Cathey v. Booth and its progeny, which he said added requirements that the statute's text does not contain.
- Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 101.101, formal notice is unnecessary if the governmental unit has "actual notice" that death occurred or that the claimant was injured or her property damaged, and the concurrence argued the actual-notice case law has become confusing and jurisdictionally consequential.
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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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25-0291·Petition For Review
- Whether the Texas Tort Claims Act's discretionary-function exceptions (sections 101.056 and 101.060) bar a premises-defect claim against TxDOT over loose limestone rock asphalt on a repaved highway, including whether loose rock asphalt is a "special defect" and whether those exceptions apply when a statutory duty dictates TxDOT's actions.
- Whether the manufacturer of limestone rock asphalt had a duty to warn TxDOT's maintenance yard workers that the material has a limited shelf life, whether that duty turns on the workers' subjective knowledge or the objective needs of all foreseeable users, and, alternatively, whether the judgment can be affirmed on no-evidence grounds.
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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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25-0429·Petition For Review
- Can a condition located off the roadway, such as an uncovered drainage opening near a worn pedestrian footpath, be a "special defect" that waives the State's immunity under the Tort Claims Act?
- Is an unexpected, concealed drainage opening analogous to an excavation for special-defect purposes?
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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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25-0678·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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25-0762·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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25-0806·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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25-0823·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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25-0997·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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25-1073·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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25-1097·Petition For Review
- Does a subcontract clause saying the work "shall be done under the direction of and to the satisfaction of" the general contractor create contractual control over the means and methods of a subcontractor's work, even though other provisions put the subcontractor in charge of the work and its safety?
- If not, did the general contractor exercise actual control over the injury-causing work, an alternative ground the court of appeals did not decide?
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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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26-0128·Petition For Review
- When a governmental unit invokes the Tort Claims Act's emergency exception, must the plaintiff negate the emergency with affirmative evidence, and can a county courtesy-patrol officer's post-accident statements, a blank "on emergency" box on a crash report and a dispute over his lights raise a fact issue?
- Does a vehicle stopped in rush-hour traffic that a courtesy-patrol officer says he was moving toward qualify as an "emergency situation" under section 101.055(2) as a matter of law?
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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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