Opinions
CALA: Bill by Sen. Cornyn would mean more financial transparency for federal judges
Legislation sponsored by U.S. Senator John Cornyn will bring much-needed financial transparency to the federal judiciary.
Letter To The Editor on SB-6
Recent numbers pulled together by the Texas Civil Justice League from several sources show a new law providing COVID-19 civil liability protections for employers, health care providers, and non-profits following appropriate public health protocols is working.
Pandemic Liability Protection Act: Is SB 6 Working?
Nearly a year has passed since the Legislature enacted SB 6, which extends liability protections to health care providers and businesses from lawsuits related to COVID-19. Has the bill been successful in its policy objective to prevent a wave of litigation in Texas courts, primarily health care liability, premises liability, and employer-employee claims?
Ivy League Justice
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s ill-informed comments and questions at the recent oral argument in the challenge to the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccination mandate case (National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor) provide a timely reminder that the hyper-elite legal talent on the nation’s High Court is not always what it is cracked up to be.
Texas Supreme Court punts on climate change lawfare case
“Lawfare is an ugly tool by which to seek the environmental policy changes the California Parties desire, enlisting the judiciary to do the work that the other two branches of government cannot or will not do to persuade their constituents that anthropogenic climate change (a) has been conclusively proved and (b) must be remedied by crippling the energy industry.”
IJ scores first-round victory for Texas mechanic
IJ client Azael Sepulveda can finally open his mechanic's shop in Pasadena, Texas. That's because of a rare temporary injunction we secured yesterday against the city's demand that he build dozens of useless and expensive parking spots.
Unmasking the Nanny State
After two years, the extraordinary government measures—federal, state, and local—taken in response to the COVID pandemic, some of which were supposed to be temporary, have finally begun to abate, along with the fear and panic that inspired them.
Patients with Kidney Disease Need Medigap Expansion Bill
Kidney disease is a life-changing diagnosis. Since I went into renal failure, I’ve believed that patients should only have to worry about the care they need to get well, not the high costs that come with it.
Does the Written Constitution Matter?
Legal scholars continue to explore the frontier of constitutional interpretation, with recent books by Ilan Wurman (The Second Founding; A Debt Against the Living), Kurt Lash (The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship; The Reconstruction Amendments), Randy Barnett (The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment; Our Republican Constitution), and many others.
Old Dog, New Tricks
The concept of a public nuisance goes back to old English criminal laws making it, for example, a crime to obstruct the king’s highway.
If you mess with Texas, be prepared to do it in Texas
First of all, don’t mess with Texas. Second, if you’re foolish enough to try that, plan on messing with Texas in Texas, because our state’s long-arm statute gives us the home-field advantage.
A Foundation for Innovation
Texas’ road from Spindletop to Tesla seems unlikely, but in reality, it was inevitable.
Time to Revisit the Standards for Awarding Mental Anguish Damages?
The return of nuclear verdicts to Texas courts (and attorney television advertising) and the recently launched efforts of the medical malpractice plaintiff’s bar to convince the federal courts to strike down Texas’ cap on noneconomic damages in medical liability cases (which is likely to play out over several years) could potentially raise an issue for state lawmakers: is it time to consider codifying at least some objective standards and levels of proof for mental anguish damages?
Texas cities want to turn video streams into revenue streams
Whom do you blame when monthly utility charges go up – for electricity, gas, phone, cable, etc.? The companies providing the services, right?
TCJL Files Amicus Brief in Second CGL Coverage Case Arising from Baytown Refinery Accident
As we reported nearly three months ago, the First Court of Appeals [Houston] handed down a decision in a coverage dispute between an additional insured and CGL carriers that flatly contravenes recent SCOTX precedent.
Needlessly Reducing Supply Risks Another Grid Failure
Nine months after the Great Freeze of 2021, after a full legislative session, three special sessions, resignations from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and a complete leadership turnover at the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC), the powers that be in Austin have still not learned the right lessons or taken sufficient steps to prevent a repeat of that unnecessary disaster.
The case of the dodgy kolache
We all do it: self-diagnose. Before we go to the doctor, we try to figure out on our own what condition we have and what may have caused it. Then we go to the doctor and share our findings. He asks us why we bothered coming to see him if we already knew what we had, and we tell him that we wanted a second opinion.
Settlement Averts SCOTX Consideration of Trial Court Setting Remote Jury Trial Over Objection of the Parties
On Monday, November 1 a remote jury trial was scheduled to commence in a Travis County district court.
The bad penny that keeps coming back: tax breaks for trial lawyers
It’s been going on for more than a decade: the lobbying to let lawyers filing contingency-based lawsuits deduct fees and expenses immediately from tax returns. Such expenses have long been treated as loans to clients, recoverable at settlement – or, in case of a loss in court, deducted from tax returns at the conclusion of a case.
Do Parents Have Rights?
Loudoun County, Virginia, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., represents the contentious zeitgeist bedeviling the body politic. As I reported elsewhere last year, the Loudoun County school board has become ground zero in an escalating culture war in which concerned parents oppose leftist indoctrination posing as curriculum.