The case involved Dr. Mitchell Anderson suing the East Texas Medical Center Cancer Institute for slander and breach of contract after the Institute reorganized its medical staff into a closed arrangement under an exclusive contract with another physician, leading to Anderson losing his privileges when he declined to sign the new contract. Following a jury verdict awarding Anderson damages, the Institute appealed. The court reversed the judgment and rendered that Anderson take nothing, holding there was no breach of the bylaws contract because Anderson failed to request a hearing within the required timeframe and that statutory due process requirements did not apply since the Institute was not a hospital under Texas law and the matter did not involve an application for privileges. The court also found insufficient evidence to support the slander claim based on statements made to Anderson's patients about his status.
In Leach v. State, the appellant was convicted by a jury of murder after a not-guilty plea and sentenced to seventy-five years in prison. On appeal, he raised three points of error, primarily arguing that the trial court erred by refusing a requested jury instruction on the defense of property under Texas Penal Code sections 9.41 and 9.42, that certain photographic evidence was improperly admitted, and that his counsel was ineffective. The court affirmed the conviction, holding that the evidence did not raise a fact issue supporting the statutory requirements for using deadly force to protect land or property against criminal mischief, that the photographs were admissible at the punishment phase, and that counsel's overall performance met constitutional standards despite any isolated shortcomings.
Brookshire Brothers appealed a judgment awarding $750,000 to employee Talbert Wagnon in a nonsubscriber workers' compensation negligence case arising from a back injury Wagnon sustained while lifting an 80-pound box of meat at a store. After an initial jury verdict for Brookshire, the trial court granted Wagnon's motion for new trial, and a second jury found for Wagnon. The appellate court affirmed, ruling that an order granting a timely new-trial motion is unreviewable on appeal, that comparative negligence is not a defense in nonsubscriber cases under Texas Labor Code section 406.033 (which limits defenses to sole proximate cause or intoxication), that evidence of prior similar employee injuries was admissible to show foreseeability, and that the damages award was supported by evidence of lost wages, pain, and mental anguish.
In Foster v. State, the appellant appealed his convictions for aggravated robbery and aggravated sexual assault, for which a jury had sentenced him to ninety-nine years and life imprisonment to run concurrently. The court addressed two points of error: the trial court's failure to define "criminal episode" or instruct the jury that the State must prove the offenses occurred in one criminal episode, and the trial court's permission for jurors to take notes without full precautionary admonishments. The court affirmed the convictions, holding that because no objections were raised at trial, any charge error was not so egregious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial under Almanza standards, and the defendant benefited from a single proceeding without exercising his right to severance; on the note-taking issue, the absence of an objection and substantial compliance with required instructions meant no harm was shown. The opinion relied on statutory definitions of criminal episode under Texas Penal Code sections 3.01 and 3.02, along with precedents like Letson v. State and Price v. State.
The case involved Charles Tidmore, charged with murder after fatally shooting Rex Burson during a confrontation at Tidmore's home over unpaid rent and eviction. Tidmore was acquitted of murder but convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years in prison. On appeal, he challenged the jury instruction on voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense, the sufficiency of the evidence, exclusion of testimony, and denial of a mistrial, among other claims. The court affirmed the conviction, holding that evidence of sudden passion arising from adequate cause justified the instruction, that self-defense claims did not preclude the verdict, and that the remaining issues were without merit.
The case involved George Robert Berry's appeal of his conviction for indecency with a child and the resulting revocation of his probation for cocaine possession. The court affirmed both the conviction and the probation revocation. It reasoned that the jury did not improperly consider the defendant's failure to testify, as evidenced by juror testimony at the new trial hearing, and that the defendant waived any objection to the use of interim jurors by not raising it at trial.