22-0878·Petition For Review
- Absent an agreement otherwise, the surface owner, not the mineral owner, owns the empty underground space left by salt mining, and the mineral owner may use that space only as reasonably necessary to produce its minerals, not to store hydrocarbons produced off-site; the Court overruled Mapco v. Carter to the extent inconsistent.
- Read as a whole, the 1947 mineral deed and correction deed reserved to the surface owner an in-kind royalty of one-eighth of the salt produced, not merely one-eighth of its market value, so the lower courts' royalty calculation was wrong and the case is remanded.
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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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23-0474·Other
- A regulation can cause a compensable regulatory taking under the Texas Constitution even if it is a valid exercise of the government's police power and was adopted to comply with the National Flood Insurance Program.
- A developer's takings claim over a city's tougher floodplain elevation rule was ripe because the city's repeated non-responses and its position that the claim can never ripen showed finality, and the developer has standing because it owns the property whose value it says was damaged.
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23-0671·Other
- A 1951 deed's "1/128 (1/16 of the usual 1/8 royalty)" language rebuts the double-fraction presumption because it uses 1/8 for its ordinary numerical value, so the deed conveyed a fixed 1/128 royalty interest, not a floating 1/16.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the trial court's summary judgment for the Cliftons.
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23-0676·Other
- A deed or lease using typical language to convey oil-and-gas rights, though silent on produced water, conveys the hydrocarbon lessee the right to possession, custody, control, and disposition of the constituent water in the liquid waste that is inevitably produced with the hydrocarbons; a surface owner who wants to keep it must reserve it expressly.
- The Court rejected the surface owner's lessee's argument that produced water is groundwater belonging to the surface estate and that the lessee's rights are merely usufructuary, distinguishing Robinson v. Robbins Petroleum and the groundwater cases as addressing water, not oil-and-gas waste.
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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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23-0767·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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23-0808·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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23-0842·Petition For Review
- Equitable estoppel may be applied against a city in an exceptional case where justice requires it and it does not interfere with governmental functions: a city's mere mistaken issuance of a permit is not enough, but affirmative misdirection, an inspection-approved amended permit, and an "OK TO FINISH" notice were enough here.
- A city need not have received a benefit from its misrepresentation for estoppel to apply; benefit is a factor that weighs in favor of the exception, not a requirement.
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23-0868·Other
- Although specific performance and damages are alternative remedies, a trial court may award an equitable monetary sum alongside specific performance of a real-estate contract to place the parties where they would have been had the contract been performed on time, limited to expenses directly traceable to the delay, foreseeable at contracting, commercially reasonable, and, where the seller holds the land, incurred in the care and custody of the property.
- The court of appeals erred by deleting the entire $308,136.14 monetary award because the trial court called it "actual damages/consequential damages" without separating recoverable property-related delay expenses from unrecoverable ones such as business-operating loan interest and taxes on other properties, so the Court remanded for that review.
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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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23-0927·Petition For Review
- A passive-voice habendum clause continuing an oil-and-gas lease "as long thereafter as" minerals are produced from the land does not require the lessee to personally cause production, so a non-operating co-tenant's leases did not terminate where the operating co-tenant continuously produced in commercial paying quantities.
- The Court disapproved Mattison v. Trotti (5th Cir.), Hughes v. Cantwell and Cimarex Energy v. Anadarko to the extent they hold otherwise, construed an ambiguous paragraph in one lease against automatic termination under the rule disfavoring forfeiture, and noted the producing co-tenant's remedy is an accounting.
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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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24-0081·Mandamus
- A mandamus petition by property owners asking the Court to compel the Comptroller to issue a final decision in their Private Real Property Rights Preservation Act case became moot when the Comptroller issued a final decision, so the Court dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction, without prejudice.
- The Court noted the law remains unclear about how to seek judicial review after an ALJ dismisses such a case at SOAH, but it cannot resolve that question absent a live controversy.
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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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24-0135·Petition For Review
- In a lease dispute over a rent-adjusting appraisal, where the parties invoked arbitration's impartiality principles, communications between one side and a prospective neutral appraiser about the dispute and about hiring him as a party appraiser must be disclosed to the other side, and the undisclosed communications here created a reasonable impression of partiality.
- The Court reversed the trial court's order confirming the appraisal valuation and remanded, leaving in place the unchallenged remainder of the judgment and declining to narrow or overrule Burlington Northern v. TUCO or to decide whether appraisers generally must meet arbitrators' disclosure requirements.
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24-0171·Petition For Review
- When a sophisticated party negotiating at arm's length grows suspicious that a business partner's representation may be false, blindly relying on that representation without asking a simple follow-up question is unjustifiable as a matter of law—context, not a tally of "red flags," decides whether reliance was justified.
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24-0213·Petition For Review
- A rural electric cooperative holds an easement by estoppel over a ranch for its distribution line, based on an unrecorded writing by a prior owner, its detrimental reliance, and the purchaser's knowledge of the line.
- But the cooperative's upgrade, which tripled the poles and nearly doubled the wires to serve a new customer and substation, exceeded the easement's scope as a matter of law, so the Court rendered judgment for the landowner on trespass.
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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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24-0438·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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24-0447·Petition For Review
- The State is not immune from a landowner's suit to repurchase condemned land the State no longer needs for public use; the Legislature placed the repurchase right among eminent-domain provisions that authorize suits against the State.
- Property is acquired "through eminent domain" when the State files a condemnation suit even if the parties later settle the price, and a landowner may repurchase just the unneeded portion; district courts and county courts at law have concurrent jurisdiction over these claims.
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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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24-0714·Certified Question
- Answering a Fifth Circuit certified question about the Texas Religious Services Clause (Art. I, § 6-a, adopted in 2021), the Court held that when the clause applies its force is absolute and categorical, barring government limits on religious services regardless of the government's interest or tailoring, but that its scope is not unlimited, and it does not extend to the government's preservation and management of publicly owned lands.
- The Court declined to define the clause's scope comprehensively, rejecting the City's view that it reaches only unequal treatment of religious services and the State's view that it covers only gatherings, and expressed no opinion on the plaintiffs' Free Exercise, freedom-of-worship, or Texas RFRA claims.
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24-0987·Petition For Review
- The Court granted both petitions, vacated the trial court's and court of appeals' judgments, and dismissed the case as moot after the parties settled, but denied the requests to vacate the court of appeals' opinion or remand to the court of appeals to consider vacatur.
- The petitions raised whether a gas-dedication agreement over a multi-million-acre Permian Basin area of mutual interest is subject to the statute of frauds and whether a court may enforce part of an otherwise invalid property description.
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24-1033·Petition For Review
- A "free of cost forever" royalty reserved on minerals "produced from the above described acreage" is calculated on raw gas at the wellhead, so it bears postproduction costs of preparing the minerals for sale downstream.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals, rendered judgment in part for the operators, and remanded.
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24-1063·Petition For Review
- Does an easement by estoppel require a vendor-vendee relationship, and was there legally sufficient evidence of an affirmative representation by the neighbor's predecessors to support a jury's finding of a general recreational easement over a four-foot strip?
- Was the driveway strip sufficiently described to support the adverse-possession judgment, and was there a justiciable controversy over the boundary line that the court of appeals could revive?
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25-0012·Petition For Review
- In a dispute over a 1933 deed reserving "an undivided one-fourth of the usual one eighth royalty," the Court held the court of appeals had jurisdiction to consider the presumed-grant doctrine in a permissive appeal, and reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.
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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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25-0247·Petition For Review
- What causation standard governs a constitutional takings claim that a governmental entity's flood-control releases flooded, or made worse the flooding of, private property: whether the "substantial factor" requirement applies, or whether but-for causation is enough.
- Whether homeowners' expert evidence about a river authority's Lake Conroe dam releases during Hurricane Harvey raised a fact issue on causation, so the court of appeals erred in dismissing their takings claims, or at least should have remanded in the interest of justice because it announced a new causation standard.
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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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25-0673·Petition For Review
- Which statute of limitations governs a constitutional takings claim for real property: whether, as the court of appeals held, the ten-year adverse possession period applies to every such claim, or whether the adverse possession statute that fits the taking, here the twenty-five-year statute, governs.
- Whether the twenty-five-year statute applies to the State's alleged mass taking of royalty interests in more than 1,600 acres along a stretch of the Canadian River, whether the discovery rule or class-action tolling saves the landowners' claims, and whether the court of appeals should have remanded rather than rendering a take-nothing judgment for the State.
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25-0742·Petition For Review
- Whether 1927 utility easements granting the right to "construct, operate, patrol, maintain and repair" a single transmission line impliedly allow the utility to remove the line and rebuild it with taller steel monopoles and larger conductors, or whether, absent forward-looking reconstruction language, the utility is limited to the structures and design used in 1927.
- Whether the court of appeals improperly relieved the utility of its summary-judgment burden to prove the project is reasonable and necessary by holding the landowners waived the issue.
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25-0748·Petition For Review
- Whether homeowners have a vested property right to operate short-term rentals in single-family residential districts, and whether the City of Dallas's zoning and registration ordinances deny them due course of law under the Texas Constitution, so that the temporary injunction against the ordinances was proper.
- Whether the homeowners showed a probable right to relief on their alternative claims: that the ordinances are retroactive, amount to a regulatory taking, violate equal protection, exceed the Zoning Enabling Act, and are preempted by the Texas Regulatory Consistency ("Death Star") Act, or alternatively whether the Court should modify the injunction so unchallenged provisions of the Registration Ordinance may take effect.
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25-0836·Petition For Review
- Whether the 2009 amendment to Article I, Section 17 of the Texas Constitution eliminated courts' deference to a city's public-use determination in condemnation cases, and whether a taking's "primary purpose" is a question of law or a jury question.
- Whether, under Government Code section 2206.001, a taking that lets a private company operate a for-profit "short-game practice area" at a municipal golf course is for a public park, or is barred as conferring a private benefit.
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25-1085·Petition For Review
- The Court vacated and remanded an oil-and-gas deed dispute involving double fractions so the court of appeals can reconsider it in light of Clifton v. Johnson (Tex. Mar. 13, 2026), which it lacked when it ruled.
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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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