Justice Boyd delivered the opinion of the Court. A subcontractor sued a premises owner for personal injuries the subcontractor suffered while working with a contractor on the owner's premises. A jury found that all three parties negligently caused the accident and assigned seventy-five percent of the responsibility to the owner, fifteen percent to the contractor, and ten percent to the subcontractor. The premises owner appealed, challenging the judgment on several alternative grounds. We...
Justice Willett delivered the opinion of the Court. Following Hurricane Ike, federally funded rebuilding projects in disaster-stricken areas of Texas were overseen by various local governmental entities. This is a contract dispute between one of those entities and a construction contractor. The sole issue is one of governmental immunity: Does the contractor's suit fall within chapter 271 of the Local Government Code, which waives immunity if the contract, among other things, provides "...
PER CURIAM . When two inherently interrelated suits are brought in different counties, the first-filed suit ordinarily acquires dominant jurisdiction and the second-filed suit should be abated. In the pending dispute, Red Dot Building System, Inc. seeks relief by writ of mandamus from trial court orders in the second-filed suit. We conditionally grant relief. Rigney Construction & Development, LLC was retained by the Brooks County ISD to construct a school in Brooks County. Rigney's...
PER CURIAM This case involves the interpretation of an option contract between landowners and an oil and gas company. The parties disagree on the interpretation of the land description in the contract. The landowners contend that the description excluded a 400-acre tract, and the oil and gas company argues that the description included the tract. The trial court held for the oil and gas company on summary judgment. The court of appeals reversed, holding that the contract was ambiguous, and...
PHIL JOHNSON , Justice . The question in this tax-refund case is whether an oil and gas exploration and production company proved that its purchases of casing, tubing, other well equipment, and associated services were exempt from sales taxes under a statutory exemption. The trial court found that the company did not prove it was entitled to the exemption. The court of appeals affirmed. We likewise affirm. I. Background Southwest Royalties, Inc. is an oil and gas exploration and...
PER CURIAM . Carolyn Frost Keenan seeks mandamus relief from trial court discovery orders that restrict access to ballots cast in a vote to amend neighborhood deed restrictions. We conditionally grant the writ. Keenan lives in the River Oaks subdivision in Houston. Her home is subject to deed restrictions enforced by a homeowners' association, River Oaks Property Owners, Inc. (ROPO). In 2014, ROPO sued Keenan seeking an injunction requiring Keenan to remove improvements that allegedly...
PER CURIAM . Hours before Matthew Sanchez died from a drug overdose, a 9-1-1 operator dispatched an ambulance to his apartment complex. Once on scene, however, emergency personnel provided assistance to a different drug-overdose victim at the same complex and then left the premises without aiding Sanchez, erroneously concluding that two closely timed 9-1-1 calls concerning overdose victims at the same locale were redundant. In a wrongful-death suit against the City of Dallas, Sanchez's...
JUSTICE BOYD delivered the opinion of the Court. This is a nuisance case, but that does not tell you much. As a legal concept, the word nuisance "has meant all things to all people." W. PAGE KEETON ET AL., Prosser AND KEETON ON TORTS 86, at 616 (5th ed.1984) [hereinafter PROSSER AND KEETON]. Courts have used it to identify the cause or source of a harm, the harm suffered, and the resulting liability. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS 821A cmt. b (Am. LAW. INST. 1979). The state of the...
Justice Willett delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Green, Justice Johnson, Justice Guzman, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Devine, and Justice Brown joined. The Texas workers' compensation regime was overhauled just over a quarter-century ago amid complaints of high costs for employers and low benefit rates for workers — inefficiencies that had reached "crisis proportions." 1 The Legislature, concerned with attorney involvement in even the most routine,...
CHIEF JUSTICE HECHT announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which USTICE GREEN, JUSTICE LEHRMANN, and JUSTICE DEVINE joined. Section 42.2516 of the Texas Education Code 1 requires the Commissioner of Education to make certain adjustments in state aid to school districts and provides that his determinations are "final and may not be appealed." 2 In this ultra vires action, three school districts complain that the Commissioner exceeded his authority under the...
CHIEF JUSTICE HECHT delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JUSTICE GREEN, JUSTICE WILLETT, JUSTICE GUZMAN, JUSTICE LEHRMANN, JUSTICE BOYD, JUSTICE DEVINE, and JUSTICE BROWN joined. A railroad employee who contracted West Nile virus from a mosquito bite contends that his employer is liable for damages under the Federal Employers' Liability Act ("FELA"), 1 which requires railroads to provide their employees reasonably safe places to work. FELA liability is generally based on common-...
JUSTICE JOHNSON delivered the opinion of the Court. The question in this tax-refund case is whether an oil and gas exploration and production company proved that its purchases of casing, tubing, other well equipment, and associated services were exempt from sales taxes under a statutory exemption. The trial court found that the company did not prove it was entitled to the exemption. The court of appeals affirmed. We likewise affirm. I. Background Southwest Royalties, Inc. is an oil and...
JUSTICE LEHRMANN delivered the opinion of the Court, in which CHIEF JUSTICE HECHT, JUSTICE GREEN, JUSTICE WILLETT, JUSTICE GUZMAN, JUSTICE DEVINE, and JUSTICE BROWN joined. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code chapter 82 entitles the "seller" of a defective product to indemnity from the product manufacturer for certain losses. In this case, the general contractor hired to construct an apartment complex seeks indemnity under chapter 82 from the manufacturer of wooden trusses used in...
JUSTICE BOYD delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal presents three issues regarding Chapter 95 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which protects property owners against liability to contractors, subcontractors, and their employees under certain circumstances. The first issue is whether the statute applies to negligence claims other than those that assert premises liability. Applying our recent decision in Abutahoun v. Dow Chemical Co., 463 S.W.3d 42 (Tex.2015), we...
CHIEF JUSTICE HECHT delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JUSTICE GREEN, JUSTICE GUZMAN, JUSTICE LEHRMANN, JUSTICE DEVINE, and JUSTICE BROWN joined. The First Amendment requires that a private individual who sues a media defendant for defamation over statements of public concern bear the burden of proving that the statements were false — that is, that the gist of the statements was not substantially true. 1 We hold that the truth of a media report of official proceedings of public...
JUSTICE GREEN delivered the opinion of the Court. After a tragic accident, a deceased derrick hand's parents sued the company that owned the drilling rig upon which the fatal accident occurred. The drilling company demanded that its commercial general liability (CGL) insurers defend it in the litigation. The insurers refused based on lack of coverage. The parents obtained a judgment against the drilling company, the company assigned its rights against the insurers to the parents, and the...
JUSTICE WILLETT delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JUSTICE JOHNSON, JUSTICE GUZMAN, JUSTICE LEHRMANN, and JUSTICE BROWN joined. We granted rehearing in this cause February 19, 2016, and now withdraw the opinion and judgment previously issued and substitute the following opinion. This long-running dispute poses a question of constitutional law: whether governmental entities that engage in flood-control efforts are liable to homeowners who suffer flood damage, on the theory that...
Chief Justice Hecht delivered the opinion of the Court. Chapter 95 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code limits a property owner's liability for injuries to a contractor "who constructs, repairs, renovates, or modifies an improvement to real property". 1 The court of appeals held that a person cannot be a contractor without an "actual" contract to perform specific work for stated compensation. 2 We disagree. In the context of Chapter 95, a contractor is simply someone who works...
Justice Green delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Willett, Justice Guzman, and Justice Brown joined, and in which Justice Johnson, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Boyd, and Justice Devine joined as to Part III. While walking to his office on The University of Texas at Austin (UT) campus, John Sampson tripped on an improperly secured extension cord and fell, injuring his shoulder. The trial court denied UT's plea to the jurisdiction, motion to dismiss, and...
JUSTICE BROWN delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice GREEN, Justice WILLETT, Justice GUZMAN, and Justice BOYD joined, and in which Chief Justice HECHT, Justice JOHNSON, and Justice LEHRMANN joined in all but Part IV. In this civil-forfeiture case, police officers arrested Miguel Herrera and seized his Lincoln Navigator. After finding drugs during an inventory search of the vehicle, the state filed a notice of seizure and intended forfeiture under Chapter 59 of the Code of...
