Texas Court of Appeals, 1st District (Houston) — appointed by James Richard Perry
Texas 281st Judicial District Court — appointed by George W. Bush
Party: Republican →Accounting, Business Administration, with highest honors, The University of Texas at Austinwith honors, The University of Texas at Austin
The case concerned whether a qui tam relator's statutory claim under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act survives the relator's death, allowing the estate's executor to continue prosecuting a Medicaid fraud suit against Dr. Robert Tafel. The Supreme Court of Texas held that such claims survive because the State owns the underlying cause of action and directs its prosecution, even though the relator acts on the State's behalf in exchange for a share of any recovery. The core reasoning was that the statute's text and structure confirm the State's primary interest and control, including rights to intervene, settle, or dismiss, without authorizing assignment or inheritance of the relator's role to third parties. The concurring opinion agreed on survival but emphasized limits on private delegation of state authority and noted unresolved issues of executor capacity.
The case concerned whether the State of Texas could assert sovereign immunity to bar a landowner's statutory claim under Property Code Chapter 21 to repurchase property previously acquired through eminent domain but later deemed unnecessary for public use. The Supreme Court of Texas held that the State has no immunity from such repurchase claims, that a condemnation suit followed by settlement on value still qualifies as property acquired through eminent domain, that repurchase may be sought for only the unneeded portion of the property, and that county courts at law have concurrent jurisdiction with district courts over these claims. The Court reasoned that repurchase rights stem directly from constitutional restrictions on the State's eminent domain power, that the Legislature placed these claims within statutory provisions authorizing suits against the State without immunity, and that the statutory scheme expressly empowers trial courts to resolve all issues in eminent domain cases, including those against the State.
This case concerned the termination of parental rights of a father and mother to their four children, based on evidence including the father's participation in the mother's abuse of one child, failure to visit or engage in reunification services for over a year, a high-speed police chase while possessing methamphetamine, and refusal to provide clean drug tests. A jury found grounds for termination on endangerment and constructive abandonment. The Supreme Court of Texas upheld termination as to the mother but reversed as to the father, concluding the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's findings against him. The partial dissent argued that the evidence was legally sufficient to uphold termination of the father's rights and that the majority failed to defer to the jury as factfinder.
The case concerned whether borrowers could invoke the Texas Constitution's forfeiture remedy to void an entire home equity line of credit after the lender, BBVA USA, overcharged approximately $10,000 in interest on a roughly $700,000 loan secured by a Texas homestead. The borrowers notified the lender of the billing error, which the lender eventually acknowledged and corrected by tendering the overcharged amount plus interest, but the borrowers sued for breach of contract and sought constitutional forfeiture of the full loan principal and interest under Article XVI, Section 50(a)(6)(Q)(x). The trial court and court of appeals rejected the forfeiture claim, and the Supreme Court of Texas affirmed, holding that the forfeiture remedy applies only to violations of the specific constitutionally mandated loan terms and conditions enumerated in Section 50(a)(6), not to breaches of other contractual provisions such as the agreed interest rate. The court's reasoning relied on the text of the Constitution, prior precedent including Garofolo v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, and the principle that forfeiture is a limited remedy tied to fundamental homestead protections rather than an open-ended sanction for any loan agreement violation.
The case involved a landowner's trespass claim against an electric cooperative that upgraded an existing power line on a legacy easement acquired decades earlier for rural electrification. The jury found that the cooperative had not exceeded the easement's scope, rejecting the trespass claim, but the majority of the Court held that the upgrade departed from the easement's historic use and constituted trespass as a matter of law, remanding the claim. The dissent argued that the landowner bore the burden of proving trespass, that legally sufficient evidence supported the jury's verdict, and that the majority improperly substituted its judgment for the jury's on disputed factual issues regarding the easement's scope and the landowner's notice.
This case involved a premises liability claim by Marissa Peterson against H-E-B after she slipped and fell on a clear liquid puddle in a toy aisle of one of its grocery stores. The trial court granted summary judgment for H-E-B, the court of appeals reversed that ruling, and the Texas Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals to reinstate the summary judgment. The Court held that Peterson failed to present evidence showing how long the puddle had existed before her fall, which is required to raise a fact issue on the store's constructive notice of the condition under established precedent. Without such temporal evidence, no-evidence summary judgment was proper even though leaks had occurred elsewhere in the store during prior rainstorms.