The Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA)—also known as the anti-SLAPP statute—was passed in 2011 to protect two constitutional rights: freedom of speech and access to the courts.  To ensure the law is used only in free speech cases, the statute specifically lists 12 kinds of cases that it is not supposed to apply to, like personal injury lawsuits or those for late payment of an insurance claim.   The Legislature clearly had a specific goal in mind with this statute. But it’s application in the real world is creating serious problems. Here’s how it is supposed to work: if a person is sued in response to exercising her First Amendment rights, she can move to dismiss the lawsuit under the TCPA, which essentially freezes the lawsuit until the court rules on the motion. A hearing has to be held within 60 days after the motion is filed, and the court has to rule within 30 days after the hearing. Some accommodations are made if a court’s docket is exceptionally busy.   Let’s play out an example: John (the plaintiff) serves Jane (the defendant) with a lawsuit. Jane files a TCPA motion to dismiss 50 days after she’s initially served. The case is

Ah, celebrities—they’re just like us. At least when it comes to squabbles between business partners. The latest example involves legendary yacht-rock duo Hall and Oates. According to reports, Daryl Hall sued over business and musical partner John Oates’ plan to sell his side of a joint venture, saying it violated their business agreement.  Hall says he learned of Oates’ plan to sell his shares… just days before Hall was scheduled to embark on an international tour. “I was blindsided by this information,” Hall wrote. If the sale had went through, Hall says he would’ve been “forced to partner with an entity that I did not agree to partner with, and whose business model does not comport with my views,” writing that “there is no amount of money that could compensate him” for that. A judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the sale until a private arbitrator has a chance to weigh in. You may be asking yourself why TLR would take an interest in what seems to be an out-of-state, music industry-insider lawsuit. The answer is because the case was filed in the Davidson County Chancery Court in Nashville. While the music industry may seem like a complicated world of

No one would blame you if you missed the shout-out to tort reform in last week’s chaotic Republican presidential debate.  In case you didn’t catch it, former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley responded to a question about how to address out-of-control healthcare costs by highlighting the pressures that unnecessary lawsuits add to our healthcare system: “How can we be the best country in the world and have the most expensive healthcare in the world? … You’ve got to deal with tort law. The doctors don’t give you the tests because they want to, it’s because of the 90 percent chance they’ll get sued.” Haley is not the only presidential candidate touting tort reform. Gov. Ron DeSantis has often pointed to Texas as the model he followed in passing tort reform in Florida—even specifically citing Dick Weekley and TLR for leadership on this issue. In the past, access to healthcare was threatened in Texas because of excessive unwarranted lawsuits against physicians and hospitals. The volume and unpredictability of lawsuits caused doctors’ and hospitals’ liability insurance premiums to skyrocket. This high cost, along with the risk and stress of non-meritorious lawsuits, drove many physicians to leave Texas. The flight

The Texas Supreme Court recently issued an emergency stay of a lower court’s ruling in a personal injury and wrongful death case, citing a 2015 reform advocated for by TLR. The plaintiffs in the case had requested discovery of the defendant’s net worth, and the trial court granted it. A statute enacted in 1995 specifically provided that a plaintiff could introduce evidence about a defendant’s net worth to help establish the amount of punitive damages that might be assessed against that defendant. However, at the same time, punitive damage awards were subject to limits that had nothing to do with the defendant’s net worth. In practice, plaintiffs regularly pleaded a right to recover punitive damages, and then would seek to discover information about the defendant’s net worth through depositions and requests for documents. Plaintiffs pursued these punitive damages claims even when they had little chance of recovering them under the facts of the case. Though not universally the case, this tactic is used by plaintiffs for a couple of reasons. First, for an individual or privately owned company, the threat that private financial information—such as financial statements, loan applications and tax returns—may be discovered and revealed creates leverage for the

What is a human life worth? An impossible question to answer, but one that juries and courts are regularly asked to decide when awarding non-economic damages in wrongful death cases—an unenviable task. As a reminder, actual damages are meant to make a plaintiff whole—in other words, return them to the position they held before they were injured. Actual damages come in two varieties, economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages reimburse an injured person for measurable losses, such as medical bills and lost wages. Non-economic damages are awarded for pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement and loss of consortium. Importantly, actual damages do not punish the defendant. A separate category—exemplary damages—are used to punish the defendant.    Actual damages are viewed from the plaintiff’s perspective, unrelated to the defendant’s conduct. Take, for example, a collision between a vehicle and a pedestrian. The injured pedestrian’s medical bills are the same, whether the driver of the car made a once-in-a-lifetime mistake or was driving drunk. Similarly, the injured person’s level of disfigurement and pain suffered are unaffected by the wrongfulness of the driver’s conduct.  Economic damages are quantifiable. But non-economic damages are difficult to quantify because they are not tied to anything that truly

A story about the shuttering of a strip club in Fort Worth caught our attention last week—not because of the scandalous establishment, but because of the lawsuit associated with it. The story’s headline declared the state had filed a public nuisance lawsuit to close down the club, which had been the scene of repeated criminal activity. According to the article, between 2020 and 2022, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office received 247 calls for service to club, including multiple shootings and stabbings.  No one is disputing that this business is a nuisance to the community, or that the Tarrant County DA did the right thing in shutting it down. But digging just a bit deeper into the actual court filing reveals exactly what action was taken—a common nuisance lawsuit. What’s the big deal—a nuisance is a nuisance, right?  Wrong. Public nuisance is a broad and relatively imprecise term. The concept has developed over centuries (literally) in court rulings. Its historic use has always been to protect access to public property against actions that impede it. Not all nuisances are public nuisances. There are lots of other nuisances that affect the health and welfare of the public—like this dangerous strip club in

As we head into the holidays—and particularly in today’s economy—every dollar counts. Thankfully, gas prices have eased from their recent highs earlier this summer, but Texas families are still feeling the squeeze of inflation in everything from groceries to Christmas gifts. But there’s one hidden cost that factors significantly into the price of goods and services that many Texans may not be aware of: the Tort Tax. Our friends at the Institute for Legal Reform recently released a nationwide study analyzing the cost of America’s tort system—that is, how much litigation costs Americans through court costs, increased insurance premiums and lawsuit awards. They found that in 2020 (the latest year for which data is available) the American tort system cost $443 billion—or 2.1 percent of national gross domestic product—and $3,621 per household. This is astounding when you consider that only 53 cents of every dollar go to plaintiffs, while the rest covers litigation costs and other expenses. Unfortunately, the old saying that everything is bigger in Texas holds true here as well, with Texas families paying an extra $3,904 in costs associated with litigation—more than the national average. That’s up from $3,535 in 2018. This Tort Tax is often passed

A lot has been in the news about the recent verdict in the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook trial. Much of the reporting discusses whether Jones will have to pay the full amount awarded by the jury, or whether Texas’ cap on punitive damages will limit the plaintiffs’ recovery. While the judge in this case hasn’t issued a final judgment, let’s get a refresher on punitive damages in Texas law. First, there is a difference between compensatory damages—which cover both economic (loss of a job or income) and non-economic damages (impact on a plaintiff’s health or reputation, for example)—and punitive damages. Compensatory damages are meant to make a plaintiff whole. Punitive damages, on the other hand, are meant to punish the defendant or act as a deterrent for future behavior. These are the damages at issue in this case. Texas capped punitive damages in 1987. The cap was set at “four times the amount of actual damages or $200,000, whichever is greater.” “Actual damages” was not defined in the statutes, creating ambiguity.  The Texas Legislature revisited the punitive damages cap in 1995, making a number of changes, including resetting the cap to: “an amount equal to the greater of:  (1)(A) two times

Last week, the Port of Houston began a long-awaited project that will expand the Houston Ship Channel to accommodate more and larger cargo ships. This much-needed expansion supports Texas’ booming population and economic growth, enabling more imports and exports into and from the Lone Star State. But without tort reform, this project wouldn’t be possible. That’s because back in 2003, a lawsuit abuse scheme against dredging companies in Texas threatened to shut our ports down. You see, while Texas has 11 deep-draft ports, we don’t have any natural deep-water ports, which means our waterways have to be dredged constantly to keep ship channels open for business. So, whether it’s a new port project, expansion of an existing port or regular maintenance and upkeep, dredging is critical to the ongoing functioning of Texas ports up and down the Gulf. But back in the early 2000s, a loophole in Texas law had allowed an explosion of personal injury lawsuits under the federal Jones Act, which allows workers to pursue lawsuits against dredgers for injuries occurring at sea. The Texas law allowed these lawsuits to be pursued in the county in which the plaintiff resided, rather than the county where the alleged injury

Much has been written about Elon Musk—eccentric billionaire, CEO of some of the most innovative companies in the world and… future owner of Twitter? While the nuances of this deal are daily fodder for folks on social media, in reality, there is a specialized court where legal issues and challenges related to Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant will be hashed out: the Delaware Court of Chancery. But first, some background. Delaware’s Chancery Court has existed since 1792, although the principles and concepts upon which the court is based date back to 16th century England. By its own description, the court is “widely recognized as the nation’s preeminent forum for the determination of disputes involving the internal affairs of the thousands upon thousands of Delaware corporations and other business entities through which a vast amount of the world’s commercial affairs is conducted. Its unique competence in and exposure to issues of business law are unmatched.” If you’ve ever wondered why so many companies are incorporated in Delaware, there’s a good chance it has to do with the Chancery Court. The state has developed an international reputation for the quality of its corporate governance laws and business dispute resolution system.